October 16, 2024
29th World Aluminium Conference was held in London between 14-16 May 2024. The conference was hosted by the International Aluminium Institutes and Aluminium Stewardship Initiatives and enabled to bring together 170 companies and 364 participants from 42 countries. This prominent event offers great oppurtunity in the aluminium sector. Attendees hav chance to maximise their networking opportunities and build their professional network in a business social environment.
On the first day of the conference, accompanied by İDDMİB Board Members and Aluminium Committee Members Ali Bakaner, Mehmet Öncel and Şevket Çalışkan, İMMİB Secretary General Ph.D.S.Armağan Vurdu took part as a speaker in the session on "Trade and Competitiveness".
Many issues affecting competitiveness in global trade were discussed in the session. There are many changes affecting trade and competition in global markets. Decarbonisation in trade, Western countries leaving the bloc, stockpiling raw materials, and reintroducing tariffs.
China has built up its industry with massive state support in order to gain huge cost advantages, and has promised this approach distorts the market by removing market producers without subsidies from the market, and the Chinese switch from primary products to downstream products such as sheet, bar, extrusion It was stated that products such as auto parts and electric vehicles affect global supply chains.
Ph.D.S. Armağan Vurdu, Secretary General of IMMIB, took part in the session as a panelist. He gave information about the aluminium sector. He stated that both the public and private sectors in Turkey have taken steps in decarbonisation. These include the Green Consensus Action Plan published by the Ministry, the low-carbon road map for the aluminium sector, the Sustainability Action Plan Report published by the Association and the ongoing work on the Green Consensus Action Plan. Working Group was counted. Emission Pricing, which is among the carbon pricing practices worldwide.
He stated that the Trade Systems are increasing; the income obtained from ETS worldwide exceeded 74 billion dollars last year. He stated that the pilot phase of the national ETS is expected to enter into force within the scope of the Draft Climate Law in our country. It is stated that greenhouse gas emissions are currently monitored in Turkey and the amount monitored reached 275 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2022. It was stated that various scenarios were studied in the sector decarbonisation roadmap in Turkey and that approximately 1.73 billion dollars of investment is needed according to the optimum reduction scenario and 2.25 billion dollars of investment is needed to reach the reduction in the more ambitious scenario. Global aluminium scrap demand is increasing due to its low carbon footprint, scrap is important for decarbonisation. He remarked that rising protectionism, geopolitical tensions and global climate change are hampering trade, and that protectionism will not be a solution, but rather will complicate the decarbonisation process. He underlined the importance of free and fair trade.