State-owned Dubai Aluminium Co (Dubal) increased output by 14 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter to 225,000 tonnes.

The increased production was spurred by robust domestic and global demand, a senior official said.
Apart from hydrocarbons, aluminium is one of the largest industries in the UAE.
A competitively priced energy and a construction boom in the world’s biggest oil exporting region, where there are more than $1 trillion of infrastructure projects, are boosting demand.
“The company’s year-to-date (to September 30) production reached a total of more than 666,000 tonnes, some 14.7 per cent higher than what we produced during the same period last year,” said Khalid Buhumaid, a Dubal general manager, according to a Reuters report.
“This places the smelter on track to achieve its forecast production volume of at least 894,000 tonnes for 2007.”   
In 2006, Dubal produced 789,341 tonnes of aluminium, used mainly in construction, transport and electrical industries. Alumina is the main raw material for smelting aluminium.
Dubal was expected to increase its production capacity by 40,000 tonnes by the second quarter of 2008 when expanded potlines at the Jebel Ali facility in Dubai become fully operational.
Aside from construction materials, the refinery produces parts for vehicle wheels and high-purity aluminium for the electronics industry.
Dubal aims to be among the world’s top five aluminium producers within five years. Its expansion plans include starting construction of the world’s largest aluminium smelter complex, costing $8 billion, in the first quarter of next year, Buhumaid said.
The complex would eventually have an output capacity of 1.4 million tonnes a year. Russia’s Rusal now operates the world’s biggest aluminium smelter at Bratsk with a capacity of 976,000 tonnes per year.
Dubal’s only competitor in the Gulf Arab region, Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), which produces 830,000 tonnes of the metal a year, said last year it was mulling plans to raise its output by up to 45 per cent to about 1.2 million tonnes.