Industry group European aluminum has stepped up its long-standing call for the European Union to expand sanctions against Russia, saying the bloc can live comfortably without major Russian aluminum products.
Rusal, the world's largest aluminium producer outside China, said the main victims of such measures would be European consumers.
"It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify the continued exclusion of aluminium ingots from the scope of EU sanctions against Russia," Paul Voss, director general of the European Aluminium Group, said in a statement on Friday. .
"We can live comfortably without it, and we should."
The European Union has been discussing a planned 14th tranche of Russian sanctions this month, but so far there has been no mention of aluminum in the Commission's proposal.
The EU has already imposed a ban on Russian-made aluminium wire, foil, tubing and pipes, but imports of Russian aluminium ingots, sheets and billets - which account for 85 per cent of EU aluminium imports from Russia - are still excluded from the measures. The US and UK had previously banned imports of Russian aluminium.
Euroaluminium groups have been lobbying the EU to ban Russian-made aluminium over Russia's incursion into Ukraine, while stressing that sanctions should avoid Rusal companies with operations in Ireland, Sweden and some other countries.
According to the organization's data, the amount of Russian primary aluminum imported into the EU in 2023 fell by 45 percent to 1.25 billion euros ($1.35 billion). Russia accounts for 8% of the EU's ingot imports.
The organization called on the EU to ban imports of Russian aluminum ingots, slabs and billets, and proposed measures including indirect imports of Russian aluminum ingots through semi-finished products from third countries.
Rusal said the proposed measures would hit small and medium-sized downstream companies in the EU.
"Rusal has been operating in Europe for more than 20 years," the company said in an emailed comment. "We hope the EU authorities will take a balanced and reasonable approach."
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