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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| History of aluminium | 7/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aluminium | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:15:10.045847+00:00 | kb-cron |
In the late 1960s, governments became aware of waste from the industrial production; they enforced a series of regulations favoring recycling and waste disposal. Söderberg anodes, which save capital and labor to bake the anodes but are more harmful to the environment (because of a greater difficulty in collecting and disposing of the baking fumes), fell into disfavor, and production began to shift back to the pre-baked anodes. The aluminium industry began promoting the recycling of aluminium cans in an attempt to avoid restrictions on them. This sparked recycling of aluminium previously used by end-consumers: for example, in the United States, levels of recycling of such aluminium increased 3.5 times from 1970 to 1980 and 7.5 times to 1990. Production costs for primary aluminium grew in the 1970s and 1980s, and this also contributed to the rise of aluminium recycling. Closer composition control and improved refining technology diminished the quality difference between primary and secondary aluminium. In the 1970s, the increased demand for aluminium made it an exchange commodity; it entered the London Metal Exchange, the world's oldest industrial metal exchange, in 1978. Since then, aluminium has been traded for United States dollars and its price fluctuated along with the currency's exchange rate. The need to exploit lower-grade poorer quality deposits and fast increasing input costs of energy, but also bauxite, as well as changes in exchange rates and greenhouse gas regulation, increased the net cost of aluminium; the real price grew in the 1970s.
The increase of the real price, and changes of tariffs and taxes, began the redistribution of world producers' shares: the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan accounted for nearly 60% of world's primary production in 1972 (and their combined share of consumption of primary aluminium was also close to 60%); but their combined share only slightly exceeded 10% in 2012. The production shift began in the 1970s with production moving from the United States, Japan, and Western Europe to Australia, Canada, the Middle East, Russia, and China, where it was cheaper due to lower electricity prices and favorable state regulation, such as low taxes or subsidies. Production costs in the 1980s and 1990s declined because of advances in technology, lower energy and alumina prices, and high exchange rates of the United States dollar. In the 2000s, the BRIC countries' (Brazil, Russia, India and China) combined share grew from 32.6% to 56.5% in primary production and 21.4% to 47.8% in primary consumption. China has accumulated an especially large share of world production, thanks to an abundance of resources, cheap energy, and governmental stimuli; it also increased its share of consumption from 2% in 1972 to 40% in 2010. The only other country with a two-digit percentage was the United States with 11%; no other country exceeded 5%. In the United States, Western Europe and Japan, most aluminium was consumed in transportation, engineering, construction, and packaging.
In the mid-2000s, increasing energy, alumina and carbon (used in anodes) prices caused an increase in production costs. This was amplified by a shift in currency exchange rates: not only a weakening of the United States dollar, but also a strengthening of the Chinese yuan. The latter became important as most Chinese aluminium was relatively cheap. World output continued growing: in 2018, it was a record 63,600,000 metric tons before falling slightly in 2019. Aluminium is produced in greater quantities than all other non-ferrous metals combined. Its real price (in 1998 United States dollars) in 2019 was $1,400 per metric ton ($2,190 per ton in contemporary dollars).
== See also ==
List of countries by aluminium production
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Bibliography == Drozdov, Andrey (2007). Aluminium: The Thirteenth Element (PDF). RUSAL Library. ISBN 978-5-91523-002-5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-16. Retrieved 2019-06-09. McNeil, Ian (2002). An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-98165-6. Nappi, Carmine (2013). The global aluminium industry 40 years from 1972 (PDF) (Report). International Aluminium Institute. Richards, Joseph William (1896). Aluminium: Its history, occurrence, properties, metallurgy and applications, including its alloys (3 ed.). Henry Carey Baird & Co. Skrabec, Quentin R. (2017). Aluminum in America: A History. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-2564-5.