Emirates Global Aluminium, the UAE’s biggest industrial company outside the oil and gas sector, completed the expansion of Al Taweelah smelter in Abu Dhabi to boost output capacity at the plant by 78,000 tonnes per year.
“The completion of this expansion project adds to our production capacity amid strong demand for aluminium as the world builds back better from Covid-19,” said Abdulnasser bin Kalban, chief executive of EGA.
“The expansion was delivered below budget and on schedule.”
EGA is jointly owned by Abu Dhabi’s strategic investment arm, Mubadala Investment Company, and the Investment Corporation of Dubai. In the first half of 2021, the company sold 1.18 million tonnes of cast metal to customers in more than 50 countries, while in 2020 it sold 2.52 million tonnes of cast metal.
Demand for aluminium has been increasing as global economies recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Aluminium prices jumped more than 25 per cent since the start of the year to trade at $2,556.50 per tonne when markets closed on Friday.
The expansion of Al Taweelah smelter was completed in three phases with the company's own technology, said EGA. It commissioned the first phase in April and the second in July.
“EGA has used its own technology in every smelter expansion since the 1990s and has retrofitted all its older production lines,” it said on Sunday.
In 2016, EGA became the first UAE industrial company to license its core process technology internationally, in a deal with Aluminium Bahrain.
Last year, EGA also signed an agreement with NEO Aluminio Colombia that could lead to the export of its energy-efficient DX+ ultra technology for the development of the South American country’s first aluminium smelter.
It also signed a series of agreements with PT Indonesia Asahan Aluminium to upgrade the Indonesian company’s aluminium smelter in North Sumatra using EGA’s technology.
EGA’s DX+ ultra technology is among the most energy-efficient aluminium smelting technologies in the world.
The company reported its strongest half-yearly results in 2021 after its earnings more than doubled from the same period a year earlier amid higher demand for its products and the global economic recovery.
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, or Ebitda, for the six months to the end of June climbed to Dh3.49 billion ($950 million).
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Should late investors consider cryptocurrencies?
Wealth managers recommend late investors to have a balanced portfolio that typically includes traditional assets such as cash, government and corporate bonds, equities, commodities and commercial property.
They do not usually recommend investing in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies due to the risk and volatility associated with them.
“It has produced eye-watering returns for some, whereas others have lost substantially as this has all depended purely on timing and when the buy-in was. If someone still has about 20 to 25 years until retirement, there isn’t any need to take such risks,” Rupert Connor of Abacus Financial Consultant says.
He adds that if a person is interested in owning a business or growing a property portfolio to increase their retirement income, this can be encouraged provided they keep in mind the overall risk profile of these assets.
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Umpires: Aleem Dar, Kumara Dharmasena, Marais Erasmus, Chris Gaffaney, Ian Gould, Richard Illingworth, Richard Kettleborough, Nigel Llong, Bruce Oxenford, Ruchira Palliyaguruge, Sundaram Ravi, Paul Reiffel, Rod Tucker, Michael Gough, Joel Wilson and Paul Wilson.
