Aluminium Outlook - Q4 2021

The aluminium metal market service long term outlook (LTO) is published quarterly and provides a detailed forecast of aluminium supply and demand fundamentals out to 2040. The medium-term outlook for the aluminium market will be shaped by China’s ability to keep to its 45 Mtpa capacity cap against rising demand as it starts to decarbonise its economy. Near-term, the emergence of the latest Covid-19 variant, and how policy makers across the world respond to it, will be a key factor in shaping the outlook. Moreover, the price to be paid for the spectacular recovery in growth in 2021 together with the associated bottlenecks will likely be in the form of higher inflation and interest rates in 2022. This poses a risk to metal demand expansion. Meanwhile, we expect Chinese output growth to be restrained over the next two years and setting the scene for price volatility over the short-term.