Alumina Price Today: SMM & LME Benchmarks

• Alumina price stands at $346.00 per tonne on the LME (Platts) benchmark
• SMM lists China-domestic alumina at $399.69 per tonne, VAT-inclusive
• China produces over 60% of the world’s alumina supply
• EGA’s Al Taweelah refinery restarted alumina output in July 2026
• Global alumina production reached an estimated 150 million tonnes in 2025
• Weight and currency conversion tables included for procurement teams

The alumina price stood at $346.00 per tonne on the LME (Platts) benchmark on 3 August 2026. On the Shanghai Metals Market, the China-domestic alumina index (Al₂O₃≥98.5%) closed the same day at $399.69 per tonne, ex-works Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, Guangxi and Guizhou. The roughly $54 per tonne gap between the two benchmarks reflects China’s 13% VAT and inland logistics costs rather than a different global market.

Current Alumina Price

Alumina is the refined intermediate between bauxite ore and smelted aluminium metal, produced via the Bayer process and consumed almost entirely by primary aluminium smelters. Because China both produces and consumes the majority of world supply, CMN tracks alumina using the same domestic/international dual-row convention applied to Aluminium, Cobalt, Nickel and Copper.

The alumina price gap between these two readings is a standing feature of the market rather than a data error — VAT and inland freight from refinery to port routinely add 15-25% to the China-domestic figure relative to the international benchmark.

Alumina Price Per Gram, Per Ounce and Per Pound

The table below converts the current alumina price from the standard per-tonne benchmark into the units most commonly used by smaller buyers and industrial procurement teams.

Prices are indicative and updated monthly. For contract pricing, consult SMM or the LME directly.

Alumina Price History

Reliable free daily history for alumina is thinner than for exchange-traded base metals, since most volume trades on formula-priced contracts rather than a single liquid spot market. The clearest recent inflection point was the Al Taweelah outage: after Iranian strikes on the Khalifa Economic Zone in Abu Dhabi forced Emirates Global Aluminium’s alumina refinery offline from late March 2026, the alumina price initially firmed on supply concern before a broader market surplus pulled FOB Australia spot pricing down to roughly $305 per tonne by early June 2026. Prices have since recovered toward the mid-$300s per tonne as EGA’s restart, confirmed 10 July 2026, eased the immediate supply worry without removing the underlying surplus.

Analysts at Fastmarkets and in the Reuters base metals poll characterise 2026 as a year of modest oversupply in alumina even as the downstream aluminium market tightens, a divergence that keeps the alumina price comparatively range-bound relative to the metal it feeds.

Alumina Price in USD, EUR, GBP and Other Currencies

Critical minerals prices are benchmarked in USD on international exchanges and the Shanghai Metals Market, but sourced, processed, and traded across multiple currency zones. The table below converts the current alumina benchmark into the currencies most relevant to the major producing, processing, and investment markets.

Exchange rates: Google Finance/XE, August 2026. CNY figures reflect the USD/CNY mid-market rate and do not represent the SMM domestic Chinese price, which incorporates VAT and may differ materially.

What Is Driving Alumina Prices

Supply-side, China dominates alumina output at an estimated 93 million tonnes in 2025, more than 60% of a world total of roughly 150 million tonnes, according to USGS data. Australia is the second-largest producer at around 17 million tonnes, followed by Brazil (11 million tonnes), India (8.2 million tonnes) and China’s own bauxite base, which itself relies on roughly 87 million tonnes of domestic mine output plus substantial Guinean imports.

Demand-side, more than 90% of refined alumina feeds primary aluminium smelting via the Hall-Héroult electrolysis process, with the remainder consumed by refractories, abrasives, ceramics and specialty chemicals. Aluminium demand growth from data centre construction, EV manufacturing and grid infrastructure has kept smelter offtake firm even as alumina supply has grown faster, producing the mild surplus analysts widely note for 2026.

Geopolitical risk has repeatedly interrupted the supply side in 2026: the March strikes on Al Taweelah, continued uncertainty over Guinean bauxite mining licences after the government revoked concessions from a UAE-based producer in August, and Strait of Hormuz shipping disruption have each added short-term volatility to an otherwise well-supplied market.

Western Alumina Supply Development

Emirates Global Aluminium’s Al Taweelah refinery, which produced 2.4 million tonnes of alumina in 2025 and supplies 46% of EGA’s own smelter needs, resumed alumina output on 10 July 2026 after a three-and-a-half-month outage; EGA expects full technical capability by year-end 2026. In Australia, expanded mining at the Boddington bauxite mine began in June 2026 to feed the 4.7-million-tonne-per-year alumina refinery near Collie, Western Australia. In the United States, the only active domestic alumina refinery, a 1.2-million-tonne-per-year plant in Gramercy, Louisiana, produced an estimated 710,000 tonnes in 2025 — a fraction of the roughly 2.5 million tonnes of alumina the US consumes annually, leaving the country more than 70% import-reliant.

Alumina Price Outlook

Fastmarkets’ base case puts 2026 aluminium — the metal alumina feeds — averaging around $2,918 per tonne, with a high case of $3,238 per tonne, while the Reuters base metals poll and Goldman Sachs have both raised aluminium price targets through 2026 on tightening metal inventories. Alumina itself is expected to track a looser balance: analysts covering the refinery segment describe a persistent, if narrowing, surplus through the remainder of 2026 as new Indonesian and Chinese capacity ramps up, tempering the upside that tighter aluminium metal markets might otherwise pass through to the refined-oxide price.

Alumina vs Aluminium

Alumina and aluminium move in the same direction over the medium term because smelters cannot operate without a continuous alumina feed, but the two rarely move in lockstep month to month. Aluminium metal pricing is dominated by exchange-traded LME positioning, energy costs at the smelter and tariff policy, while alumina pricing is set more by refinery-level bauxite costs and China’s domestic supply-demand balance. The result, visible in 2026, is an alumina market in mild surplus sitting beneath an aluminium market analysts increasingly describe as heading toward deficit.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Prices are subject to change without notice. For country-level production context, see CMN’s China critical minerals hub and Australia critical minerals hub.