The CEO of Rusal, one of the world’s biggest aluminum producers, has said the company had fully resumed supplies of primary aluminum to the United States and Europe to the level prior to U.S. sanctions imposed last year.
“The volume of supplies to Europe and U.S. has been fully resumed on aluminum. It has not been resumed on alloys, though we are working towards that,” Rusal’s Chief Executive Officer Evgenii Nikitin said in an interview with state-run news agency TASS at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum on Monday.
He noted that the company continues resuming supplies to all export markets in pre-sanctions volumes. Nikitin also said that Rusal is starting supplies on new contracts with Japanese and American contractors.
Rusal’s Director of Strategy, Business Development and Financial Markets Oleg Mukhamedshin said in early March that the company had resumed deliveries of high-margin produce and alloys to the United States “at significant levels.”
Rusal and its former owner, Oleg Deripaska, were added to a U.S. sanctions list in April last year, along with two other companies owned by the oligarch, En+ and EurSibEnergo. The measures were lifted in January, after long negotiations and a deal with the U.S. Treasury Department which stipulates Deripaska ceding control over his companies.
Rusal is the largest aluminum producer outside China and the only primary aluminum producer in Russia. In 2018, the company produced 3.753 million tons of aluminum, an increase of 1.3% compared with 2017.
Meanwhile, sales dropped by 7.2% in the period to 3.671 million tons. Rusal exported more than 80% of its products before U.S. sanctions were imposed.
