Dubai aluminium entrenches presence in japan
Specialist automotive exhibition used to promote aluminium giant’s capabilities.
Dubai’s industrial flagship, Dubai Aluminium Company Limited (“DUBAL”), has once again held its corporate and national flags high in Japan, through the company’s successful participation at the annual Automotive Engineering Exposition 2008, held in Yokohama from 21 to 23 May this year. The event, which provides a platform for manufacturers of automobiles, parts and material, testing and measurement equipment, software, car-electronics and related companies to exhibit their latest products and technology, was leveraged by the aluminium giant to showcase the company’s own specialised alloy products that are used extensively by Japanese auto part manufacturers.
“As in prior years, the Automotive Engineering Exposition 2008 gave DUBAL opportunities to promote our status as a major supplier of premium quality to the automotive industry. It also allowed us to network with various original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) of parts, as well as designers of OEM parts, giving us insight into new technologies and developments in this sector; and to demonstrate our capabilities, especially DUBAL’s capacity to tailor-make alloys to suit customers’ requirements,” says Mohammad Al Mutawa, Marketing & Sales Manager, Asia: DUBAL. “Various motor vehicle parts manufactured using DUBAL alloys were on display, while consultants were on hand to demonstrate the mechanical properties and capabilities of our alloys.”
With the capacity to produce more than 950,000 metric tonnes of high quality hot metal a year, DUBAL is currently the seventh largest producer of primary aluminium in the world. Products are manufactured in three broad categories: foundry alloy for automotive applications, extrusion billet for construction, industrial and transportation purposes and high purity aluminium for the electronics and aerospace industries. A strategic plan is in place to grow DUBAL into the fifth largest producer of primary aluminium in the world by 2015, by marketing 2.5 million tonnes per year.
Some 100,000 tonnes of aluminium will be shipped from DUBAL to Japan during 2008, the majority of which will be billet (52 per cent), followed by high purity aluminium (25 per cent), foundry alloy (11 per cent) and standard purity (9 per cent). Continuous growth in demand from the region will be satisfied through the large, additional volumes of metal coming on stream for sale by DUBAL within the next three to five years.
