Novelis profits hit by lower aluminium prices

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Global aluminium producer Novelis has reported lower earnings for the first quarter of its 2012/13 fiscal year due to decreased volumes and lower scrap benefits year-on-year.

Its EBITDA was $259 million for the quarter up to 30 June down 15 per cent year on year from $306 million reported in the same period last year.

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Net income excluding special items was up 20 per cent to $91 million.

Novelis president and chief executive Phil Martens said: “As expected, EBITDA increased sequentially as we saw market demand firm in most of our regions but decreased on a year-on-year basis, primarily due to the loss of some can business in North America, a meaningful decrease in scrap benefits as well as some production and supply chain disruptions we faced early in the quarter.

“Despite this, we’ve successfully offset the lost volumes going forward and resolved these production issues. In fact, we ended the first quarter very strong with June operating at levels not seen in nearly a year.

“In addition, we continued to execute on our strategy, closing non-core and underperforming assets in the quarter in both Europe and Canada, while staying focused on our various expansions globally. We continue to see strong global demand in our premium products segment and the addition of nearly 900 kilotonnes of capacity over the next several years will allow us to capture this significant growth going forward.

“We expect to generate strong cash flow going forward, enabling us to continue investing in our strategic global rolling and recycling expansions in North America, South America, Europe and South Korea. All of these expansions are progressing well, with our South Korea recycling and Brazil rolling capacity projects on track to come online at the end of this year.”