Bauxite is refined into Alumina through the Bayer Process summarised above.
Alumina Production
Chinese production of alumina, driven by its rapidly expanding economy's demand for aluminium, grew at an average rate of 22%py between 1998 and 2007, and by 42% in 2007 alone. The demand for bauxite was met by a rapid and massive opportunistic increase in Indonesian bauxite output, resulting in Chinese imports from Indonesia rising from 832kt in 2004 to 15.4Mt in 2007. This rate of import continued into 2008 with 8.8Mt in the first four months of the year, 4.8Mt of which came from Indonesia. With some 25Mt of new alumina capacity planned in China in the next two to three years, demand for bauxite, which cannot be met from domestic sources, will continue to rise. It seems unlikely that the Indonesian bauxite mining industry will be able to support Chinese demand in the long term, and higher priced imports from India are also growing rapidly. The Chinese alumina industry is also looking to Australia as a source of bauxite, and Chalco is investing in the 7.5Mtpy Aurukun project in northern Queensland.
(Roskill Report 2007)