Middle East aluminum risk by product and company, Part 1: EGA/Alba

Headline figures tend to frame the impact in terms of global supply or unwrought aluminum flows. However, that framing doesn’t reveal how the US has engaged with these producers in recent years.

Both countries and the broader Middle East region act as a supply base for more narrowly defined alloys and specifications that are not widely produced or readily substituted elsewhere.

The first part focuses on EGA and Alba, the two producers at the center of the recent military strikes, and where their products intersect most directly with US demand.

EGA and Alba

EGA and Alba operate fully integrated systems that span primary ingot, billet, rolling slab, and foundry alloys.

EGA’s Al Taweelah complex alone combines smelting, alumina refining, and recycling, with downstream casting capacity that produces everything from P1020 ingot to extrusion billet and rolling slab in 5XXX and 6XXXX series alloys.

Alba similarly produces a wide range of rolling slab, billet, and foundry alloys, with documented capability across 1XXX, 3XXX, 5XXXX, and 6XXX series products.

However, US import reliance is not evenly distributed across that range.

For common alloy sheet products such as 5052 and 3003, domestic and Canadian rolling mills typically cover a large share of demand. Even when imports supplement supply, they do not necessarily represent a single-point dependency. In those cases, disruptions in the Middle East may tighten availability, particularly for the global market at large, but substitution pathways exist through domestic reallocation, higher-cost imports or gauge and temper adjustments.

Where EGA and Alba actually intersect with US demand

A closer look at trade flows and product-level exposure shows US reliance on these producers is concentrated in specific forms and alloys rather than broad unwrought categories.

Alba’s billet

Alba’s exports to the US, as indicated through government filings and product-level disclosures, are heavily weighted toward 6XXX series extrusion billet, particularly in 7-inch and 9-inch diematers. On a headline basis, Bahrain accounted for roughly 4.5% of total US unwrought aluminum imports in 2025. However, that share understates its role in more specific product segments.

With unwrought aluminum alloys of uniform circular cross section, Bahrain represented more than 17.5% of US imports, or roughly one-third of Canada’s volume. In practice, that exposure often aligns with 6063 alloy billet, widely used across architectural and general extrusion applications.

The UAE shows a similar pattern in regard to billet, but at a larger scale. While the UAE accounted for just under 16% of total US unwrought aluminum imports in 2025, its share rises sharply in billet-specific trade.

The country represented about 40% of US imports of unwrought aluminum alloys of uniform circular cross section, exceeding volumes from Canada by a wide margin despite Canada’s dominance across most broader aluminum import categories.

Based on available disclosures and historical trade patterns, a portion of that material has aligned with 6XXX series billet, including specifications such as 6005, although the full mix of alloys extends beyond what is capture in public records.

EGA’s high-purity aluminum

The same dynamic appears in US reliance on EGA for high-purity aluminum, which is often embedded within broader unwrought aluminum trade data.

Again, the UAE accounted for just under 16% of total US unwrought aluminum imports in 2025. That figure serves proxy for EGA’s exports to the US as the company is the only large-scale producer in the country supplying that class of material.

Within the high-purity ingot subcategory, the UAE supplied roughly 97% of US imports in 2025, despite high-purity metal representing only a small share of total unwrought volumes. The company produces a range of high-purity and specialty ingot grades, including P0202, P0204, P0303, P0305, P0404 and P0506, that have historically been supplied to the US.

That distinction matters because high-purity aluminum is not interchangeable with standard-grade metal.

Supply has long been structurally limited in the US market. Even with incremental capacity additions in the form of Arconic’s Davenport Works expansion in Iowa, the imbalance widened significantly following the 2022 idling of Century Aluminum’s Hawesville, Ky., smelter, which had been one of the only other domestic sources with the potential to support high-purity output. It subsequent sale to a data center developer has effectively removed the prospect of a restart.

EGA’s foundry alloys

The same concentration dynamics extends beyond high-purity metal into foundry alloys, where EGA’s role is less visible in trade data but still relevant in specific applications.

Imports of foundry alloys from the UAE are buried deep within the unwrought aluminum subchapter of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) hierarchy, where they are not readily distinguishable in headline trade data, yet they remain meaningful within that subcategory.

Foundry alloys historically imported from EGA into the US such as A356.2 (and strontium-modified A356.2) and AlSi10MnMg, groups aluminum alloy castings intended for remelting.

On a broader basis, the UAE accounted for 15.8% of total US unwrought aluminum imports in 2025. Within that narrower category, that share increases to 17.9%.

Canada remains the largest supplier in that subcategory. However, removing Canada from the comparison highlights the concentration of remaining supply. Under that view, the UAE accounted for about 56.5% of US imports of foundry ingot from all other countries in 2025.

That distinction matters because alloys such as A356.2 are used in high-strength, pressure-tight castings across automotive, aerospace, and industrial applications, including components where lightweight structural integrity is critical.

While the HTS category captures these materials as a group, and even UAE does list 10 distinct foundry alloys in its product portfolio, Commerce Department filings show two alloy groups — A356.2 (and A356.2Sr) and AlSi10MnMg.

According to USGS data, domestic production of “95/5 Al-Si, 356, etc. (0.6% Cu, max.)” — the category that includes A356.2 — totaled 23,400 metric tons on a January-November 2025 basis. Over the same period, “Al-Si alloys (0.6% to 2.0% Cu)” — which captures alloys such as AlSi10MnMg — totaled 2,100 metric tons.

Annualizing those figures results in an estimated combined, full-year output of about 27,500 metric tons.

US imports from the UAE in 2025 exceeded that combined total by roughly 12%, indicating that import volumes alone slightly outpaced domestic production across those USGS-defined aluminum-silicon casting alloy categories.

EGA and Alba are not the only producers in Bahrain and the UAE. Other suppliers in those countries serve more specialized roles in US supply chains. This is part of a broader product- and company-level breakdown of Middle East aluminum supply. See Part 2 and Part 3 of this series for additional coverage.