Asian Metal visits Qingdao Anteisin Group, Hi-Holding and Winning Shipping

On March 28, 2014, Mr. Friday Gao, manager of Base Metals Department from Asian Metal, visited Qingdao Anteisin Group, Qingdao Hi-Holding Inc. and Winning Shipping Co., Ltd (Qingdao).

On the morning of March 28, Mr. Gao firstly visited Anteisin Group and had a meeting with Mr. Ding Pingsheng, vice president of Anteisin. The group owns an aluminum ingot plant with running capacity of 450,000tpy in Xinjiang of China. According to Mr. Ding, the final running capacity will reach 900,000tpy. The designed capacity is 1.8 million tons per year, but may not come on stream completely due to sluggish aluminum market and Chinese policy. Regarding the current aluminum market, Mr. Ding revealed that most aluminum ingot producers suffer losses at present and some of them will halt production if the market cannot recover in the coming two months. Due to low power cost, aluminum ingot producers in Xinjiang can still earn profit, but in the long run, the rising freight cost will become a challenge for those producers in Xinjiang. He pointed out that the aluminum industry faces reshuffle in China.

In the morning, Mr. Gao also visited Qingdao Hi-Holding, a bauxite trader in China and met with Mr. Han Dong, General Manager Assistant of the company. Mr. Han told Asian Metal that they are exploring new resources like Indian bauxite after Indonesia stopped bauxite export. Because there are some new alumina refineries in China, they planned to strengthen bauxite business in the future.

On the afternoon of March 28, Mr. Gao visited Winning Shipping and met with Ms. Han Shuying, General Manager of the company and Mr. Simon Qiao, Chartering Manager of the company. Ms. Han confirmed that the Indonesian export ban influenced their business greatly, as they mainly deal with bauxite shipping. According to Simon, they shipped around 50 million tons of Indonesian bauxite in 2013 and turn to the India market in 2014. Besides, they revealed that they invested an alumina refinery in Indonesia together with Shandong Weiqiao Aluminum and Indonesia Harita Mining. The refinery with annual capacity of 1.5 million tons may come on stream in April of 2015.