On March 28, the US-Iran tension took a new turn as Iranian missiles struck the Khalifa Economic Zone in Abu Dhabi, damaging the alumina refinery that feeds Emirates Global Aluminium’s Al Taweelah smelter, the largest aluminium production complex in the Gulf. Four hundred kilometres south-west, Aluminium Bahrain declared force majeure and shut roughly a fifth of its capacity, citing the same conflict.
Neither company builds weapons, ships crude, or has any stake in the war between the United States, Israel and Iran. For several weeks this spring, two of the world’s most competitive aluminium producers became collateral damage in someone else’s fight.
That is the detail worth sitting with, because it reframes the question the industry has been asking since renewed US-Iran hostilities put the Strait of Hormuz back on every trading desk’s screen in July. The story was never really about whether Hormuz closes.
Tankers, oil majors and the US Navy own that question. The question for aluminium is narrower and more uncomfortable: has geopolitical instability stopped being an occasional shock and become a permanent input cost, sitting alongside electricity, alumina and carbon pricing as a line item that procurement teams now budget for by default?
The early evidence says yes. Global primary aluminium output reached roughly 73.8 million tonnes in 2025, according to International Aluminium Institute (IAI) data, with the five GCC smelters contributing around 6.16 million tonnes, or roughly 8 per cent of world supply.
That share matters disproportionately because, in AL Circle’s earlier reporting, more than 80 per cent of Gulf metal is exported. It is a region built to sell into global markets, which is precisely why the March strikes rippled so far beyond the smelters themselves. EGA’s Al Taweelah refinery, which produced 2.4 million tonnes of alumina in 2025 and met 46 per cent of the company’s feedstock needs, went dark for more than three months before restarting in July.