Aluminium gains as a UAE smelter faces prolonged repairs

LONDON: Aluminium prices rose on Tuesday and the key aluminium spread on the London Metal Exchange jumped with the market pricing in confirmation of prolonged repairs which a smelter in the UAE is facing after an Iranian attack late last month.

The three-month aluminium contract on the London Metal Exchange (LME) gained 1.1% to $3,507 a metric ton in official open-outcry trading.

Emirates Global Aluminium said on Friday that fully restoring production at its Al Taweelah smelter, which produced 1.6 million tons of cast metal in 2025, could take up to a year as it entered an emergency shutdown after the March 28 attacks.

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It is “a rather significant amount of time to be out,” Marex analyst Ed Meir said in a note, adding that a significant outage in the Gulf region will likely tip the market into a sizable deficit this year.

The premium for LME cash aluminium contract over the three-month contract was last at $77 a ton, its highest since 2007, on Tuesday, up from $61 in late March, signalling tightening availability for immediate supply.

In the wider markets, investors were in wait-and-see mode as the looming deadline imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump for a deal with Iran threatened escalation in the conflict.

LME copper was down 0.1% at $12,344 a ton in official activity under pressure from rising stocks in the LME system.

Goldman Sachs on Monday raised its forecast of a surplus in the global copper market this year to 490,000 tons from the previously expected 380,000 tons after its economists estimated that higher energy prices could shave 0.4 percentage points off global GDP growth.

Copper stocks in the LME-registered warehouses rose to 378,775 tons, their eight-year high, after 16,125 tons of inflows in Asia, Europe and the U.S. on April 2, daily LME data showed.

Elsewhere on the LME, zinc gained 1.8% to $3,322.5 while lead was steady at $1,933. Both hit the highest since March 11 earlier in the session. Tin lost 0.6% to $46,000and nickel was down 0.5% at $17,000.