The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and ten other departments jointly issued the “Implementation Plan for High Quality Development of Aluminum Industry (2025-2027)” on March 11, 2025, and announced it to the public on March 28. As a guiding document for the transformation and upgrading of China’s aluminum industry, its implementation cycle is highly aligned with the “dual carbon” goals and the window of industrial technology iteration, aiming to solve core pain points such as high dependence on external resources and high energy consumption pressure, and promote the industry to leap from scale expansion to quality and efficiency improvement.

 
Core Objectives and Tasks
The plan proposes to achieve three major breakthroughs by 2027:
Strengthening resource security: The domestic bauxite resources have increased by 3% -5%, and the production of recycled aluminum has exceeded 15 million tons, building a coordinated development system of “primary aluminum+recycled aluminum”;

 
Green and low-carbon transformation: The benchmark energy efficiency capacity of the electrolytic aluminum industry accounts for over 30%, the proportion of clean energy use reaches 30%, and the comprehensive utilization rate of red mud has been increased to 15%;
Technological innovation breakthrough: Overcoming key technologies such as low-carbon smelting and precision machining, the supply capacity of high-end aluminum materials meets the needs of aerospace, new energy and other fields.

 
Critical Path and Highlights
Optimization of production capacity layout: Strictly control the addition of new production capacity, promote the transfer of electrolytic aluminum to clean energy rich areas, promote high-efficiency electrolytic cells above 500kA, and eliminate low energy efficiency production lines; The aluminum processing industry focuses on new energy, electronics and other fields, cultivating advanced manufacturing clusters.

Upgrading of the entire industry chain: Upstream promotion of mineral exploration breakthroughs and low-grade mineral development, midstream strengthening of red mud resource utilization, and downstream expansion of high-end aluminum alloy material application scenarios, such as automotive lightweighting and photovoltaic modules.

 
Enhancing international competitiveness: Deepening overseas resource cooperation, optimizing aluminum export structure, encouraging enterprises to participate in international standard setting, and enhancing global industrial chain discourse power.

 
Policy implications and industry impact
China’s aluminum industry is globally leading in scale, but its dependence on foreign resources exceeds 60%, and the carbon emissions from electrolytic aluminum account for 3% of the country’s total. The plan is driven by the dual wheels of “domestic resource storage+renewable resource circulation”, which not only alleviates the pressure of raw material imports but also reduces environmental load. At the same time, technological innovation and green transformation requirements will accelerate industry integration, forcing enterprises to increase research and development investment and promote the extension of aluminum processing to high value-added links.

 
Industry insiders point out that the implementation of the plan will significantly enhance the resilience of the aluminum industry, provide solid material support for strategic emerging industries such as new energy and high-end equipment manufacturing, and help China move from a “major aluminum country” to a “strong aluminum country”.