Taiwan’s GDP has increased 2.6% year-on-year in Q4 2016, accelerating from the 2.0% increase in Q3, marking the fastest pace of growth since Q2 2015. For the full year 2016, Taiwan’s economic growth was 1.4%, strengthening from the 0.7% expansion in 2015. The government expects GDP to expand 1.9% in 2017. With the growth in GDP, aluminium consumption is increasing at a faster speed.
The country ranks second in per capita aluminium consumption with a rate of about 33.3 kg. The island country has seen significant demand growth for aluminium alloy on the island. The country produces about 819,000 tonnes of aluminium domestically in four main categories: Secondary Aluminium Alloy, Casting, Rolling and Extrusion Industries. C.S. Aluminium Corp., which was a subsidiary of China Steel Corp. (CSC), has about 400,000 tonnes of aluminium product output capacity per year. Taiwan imports primary aluminium for making aluminium alloys and also imports aluminium alloys to supplement domestic production and make value added products.
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Taiwan imported 5,83,795 tonnes of aluminium (alloyed & non-alloyed) in 2015, which increased to total at 5,96,304 tonnes in 2016. Based on this statistics, for the first ten months of 2017, the volume is estimated to total at 5,03,619 tonnes. The trend shows increasing consumption of aluminium in Taiwan mostly driven by demands from the electronics sector.
Cost from import of aluminium in Taiwan has however dropped year-over-year. The cost from aluminium import was USD 758 million and USD 735 million respectively for the years 2015 and 2016. For the first ten months of 2017, the cost of import is estimated to be about USD 509 million. The estimate may change based on the trends in LME aluminium prices. The drop in value in last two years can be attributed to the fall in LME aluminium prices and the premium for delivery of the metal.
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Taiwan imports primary aluminium and alloys primarily from Australia. Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia also exports substantial amount of aluminium to Taiwan. China mostly exports semi-finished aluminium products to Taiwan.
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