Global Trade Data Visualizer

In February, the International Aluminium Institute (IAI) has launched a new web-based tool to visualize the aluminium value chain, from bauxite to scrap, including inter-regional trade flows. “In a fast changing sector, which has seen new regions of production and consumption – led by China –, grow at unprecedented rates in recent years, understanding inter-regional flows of raw materials and final products has never been more important,” the global association of aluminium producers is convinced.

The IAI‘s mass flow visualization allows users to manipulate an animated Sankey diagram, showing the production, consumption and trade of bauxite, alumina, ingots (primary and recycled), semis, final products and scrap across nine regions over the period 1962 to 2014.

Among other things the animation shows that:
■ In 2004, 15 million tons of scrap were available worldwide. In 2014 this scrap availability had increased to 26 million tons.
■ North America, historically the largest generator of scrap globally, has been overtaken by China, which generated 6.5 million tons of scrap in 2014.
■ In 2014, 17 million tons of aluminium contained in final products were traded between the nine regions, followed by aluminium contained in bauxite (15 million tons), aluminium contained in alumina (14 million tons), ingots (12 million tons), semis (5 million tons) and scrap (4 million tons).

2015 data will be added in the next few months and 2016 data by the end of 2017.

www.world-aluminium.org/statistics/massflow

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