Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA), the largest ‘premium aluminium’ producer in the world, today announced the world’s first bauxite cargo shipment using a Liquefied Natural Gas-fuelled vessel. The shipment, in a Capesize ship, is carrying bauxite mined by EGA subsidiary Guinea Alumina Corporation to a customer in China.
LNG-fuelled ships can achieve up to 28 per cent lower greenhouse gas emissions on a tank-to-wake
basis compared to vessels using traditional marine bunker fuel, according to SEA-LNG, a multi-sector
industry coalition. The global shipping industry as a whole was responsible for over two per cent of the
word’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.
The bauxite shipment is onboard the Ubuntu Empathy, an LNG dual-fuelled vessel operated by Anglo
American and chartered by EGA. The vessel is one of Anglo American’s 10-strong chartered fleet of
lower emission LNG dual-fuelled vessels.
Capesize vessels are amongst the largest bulk cargo carriers in the world, and are up to 300 metres
long – the length of two football fields – and 50 metres wide. Capesize vessels can carry around 180
thousand tonnes of bauxite ore.
Emirates Global Aluminium predominantly uses Capesize vessels to ship bauxite ore from the Republic of Guinea to the company’s alumina refinery in Abu Dhabi and to third-party customers around the world. Last year, EGA exported some 14.1 million wet metric tonnes of bauxite from Guinea.
Bauxite is the ore from which aluminium is derived.
Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, Chief Executive Officer of Emirates Global Aluminium, said: “Aluminium
plays an essential role in decarbonisation economy-wide. It is also important how sustainably aluminium
is produced, and this includes the transportation around the world of millions of tonnes of raw materials.
Our approach to decarbonisation is comprehensive and extends beyond our operations to include
everything from supply chain to financing. LNG-fuelled cargos are one way for us to reduce our
emissions, and we are proud to pioneer this fuel for shipping bauxite. Our goal is to reach net zero by 2050, including from our supply chain, and help meet the increasing global demand for the low carbon
aluminium.”
EGA’s bauxite mining subsidiary GAC makes EGA one of the biggest merchant bauxite suppliers in the
world. GAC began production in 2019.
EGA was the first aluminium producer and the first Middle East company to join global shipping and
maritime sustainability initiative, the Sea Cargo Charter, in 2023.
In 2022, EGA signed an agreement with one of its shipping partners, “K” Line to develop and implement
new marine decarbonisation technologies suitable for EGA’s bulk cargo shipping routes in the eastern
Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean.
