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Russian aluminium producer Rusal said on Thursday it had reached an agreement with the state-owned Ghana Integrated Aluminum Development Corporation to jointly develop bauxite and alumina projects in Ghana.
The deal to tap one of West Africa’s richest deposits was announced during a summit between President Vladimir Putin and African leaders in Moscow. In a statement, Rusal said the projects would be implemented through two joint ventures in which it would hold majority stakes.
Rusal, the world’s largest aluminium producer outside China, has not been targeted by Western sanctions related to the war in Ukraine. But the company has been seeking to reduce its reliance on third-party suppliers of alumina, a key raw material for aluminium production, after losing around 40% of its supplies from Ukraine and Australia in 2022.
Rusal and GIADEC have agreed to develop bauxite mining operations in Ghana with annual output of up to 5 million tons and to build an alumina refinery with an annual capacity of 1.2 million tons, the Russian company said.
It said estimated resources in the area earmarked for development at the Nyinahin deposit in southwest Ghana are more than 100 million tons of bauxite.
Rusal already has extensive operations in Africa, including bauxite mines and alumina production assets in neighbouring Guinea. It produced 6.858 million tons of alumina in 2025, accounting for 4.7% of global output and 85% of its alumina needs.
Ghana last year cancelled a $1.2 billion lease agreement with local firm Rocksure International in order to seek a foreign partner with which to tap the Nyinahin deposit.
GIADEC CEO Reindorf Twumasi Ankrah was quoted in a statement published by Rusal as saying the new deal was in line with his company’s goal of establishing a fully integrated aluminium industry in Ghana that would allow for domestic processing of bauxite.
The projects would bring investment, thousands of jobs and improvements to rail and port infrastructure, he said.
(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Alessandra Prentice, Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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