Aluminum Supplies Exceed Demand?

World supplies of aluminum exceed demand for the metal and most producers are not making enough money to justify plans to increase output, said Paul O’Neill, the chairman of Aluminum Co. of America, the world’s largest aluminum producer.

“We are in a surplus and there is more metal than the market wants,” said O’Neill, chairman and chief executive officer of Pittsburghbased Alcoa. “Most people are not making the rates of return needed to justify such expansion.”

Unlike O’Neill, most analysts say aluminum demand exceeds supply. Some estimate the deficit at as much as 100,000 metric tons a year.

Several of the world’s largest aluminum producers have announced the restart of previously mothballed capacity. Reynolds Metals Co., the third-largest aluminum company globally, said in January it will restart 47,000 tons of idled capacity at its Longview smelter in Washington to eventually bring the plant up to full capacity.