Recently, it said that Shanxi, Henan and other bauxite main producing areas will halt production due to environmental protection inspection. Rumor goes that during the 19th NPC summit , Shanxi will also close  bauxite fields .Thus the whole industry now is worrying about the short supply of bauxite.    

It is expected that in domestic alumina market the supply and demand will change rapidly in the near  future. The excess stock will be alleviated by the decrease of supply. In addition, the bauxite price will raise the cost alumina production .

The short supply of bauxite does not have a significant impact on alumina production in the short term, but higher ore prices have pushed up the costs of alumina production.

In China, nearly 64% of alumina production using domestic bauxite, of which 68% concentrated in Shanxi, Henan. According to a research, at present, Shanxi and Henan provinces do shut down some bauxite mines. Due to the supply of bauxite, a small number of alumina enterprises in Shanxi and Henan  are forced to close, but most of the alumina enterprises in the bauxite stock support is still able to maintain normal production. It is estimate that in Shanxi and Henan the majority of alumina enterprises’ bauxite stock can still support the normal production of 2-3 months.  

With the normalization of environment inspection in mine fields, the bauxite production will continue to be unsteady.In the future , environmental inspection in open-air mine fields will be more stringent, which means that environmental inspection will affect domestic bauxite production for a long time.

The rising costs of alumina production is indisputable now.