Refining Where the Bauxite Is: Guinea, Ghana and the New Alumina Map

Guinea targets five alumina refineries by 2030 and Ghana wants two more. What October 2026 shows about local processing, power, a surplus market, and the question for regions without bauxite.

For decades, most bauxite from West Africa left as raw ore. In October 2026, both of the region's big producers set out plans to change that. The direction is clear. The open questions are power, financing and a global alumina market that is already in surplus.

Guinea: five refineries by 2030

Guinea wants five operating alumina refineries by 2030, with combined capacity of 7 to 8 million tonnes a year. Daouda Diakité, Senior Adviser to the Minister of Mines and Geology, set out the target at African Mining Week in Cape Town on 14 October, Prospect reported.

The gap is large. Guinea exported a record 114.8 million tonnes of bauxite in the first half of 2026 and accounted for 85% of China's bauxite imports in May. Domestic alumina output was just 360,000 tonnes in 2025. Its only operating refinery is Friguia, run by Rusal, according to Ecofin Agency.

The government has used its market position to push local processing. It ordered miners to submit refinery plans in 2022 and withdrew the mining rights of Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) in August 2025 after a dispute over refinery plans. EGA reached a settlement in May 2026.

The first wave is led by Chinese-backed miners with their own concessions:

SPIC broke ground on a 1.2 Mt/y refinery at Boffa in March 2025, a US$1 billion project due for completion at the end of 2027. It is building a 250 MW power plant, with 100 MW allocated to the national grid.
Chalco is developing a refinery of the same capacity next to its Boffa mine. On 20 October, Guinea's mines ministry reviewed the feasibility study for the project's second phase: bauxite output rising from 12 to 28 Mt/y, a 1.2 Mt/y refinery, about US$1.45 billion and a 36-month build, Guinée Mines & Nature reported.
The SMB-Winning consortium is building a third refinery at Dobali.
CBG plans to start a fourth by the end of 2026 and has held financing talks with US government lenders.

Developers must bring their own electricity. Grid power reaches just under half of Guinea's population.

Ghana: an ambition still at study stage

On 19 October, President John Mahama reaffirmed Ghana's plan to refine bauxite at home in his opening address at Mining in Motion 2026 in Accra, Ecofin Agency reported. Ghana wants at least two refineries with 4 to 6 million tonnes a year of combined capacity, and aims to end exports of unprocessed ore by 2030.

Construction has not started. The refinery linked to the Awaso mine is at prefeasibility stage, launched in July. A US$60 million agreement between GIADEC and the UAE-based Metalloid Resources Investment covers bauxite development at Nyinahin, but it is not yet clear how much of it would fund a refinery. Meanwhile, the state-owned VALCO smelter, operating since 1967, still imports all of its alumina.

The market these refineries will sell into

New capacity arrives in a weak market. According to Prospect, Guinean bauxite sold for about US$40 a tonne at port in mid-October, against US$391 a tonne for Western Australian alumina on 16 October. Refining locally saves ocean freight of roughly US$30 a tonne on ore shipped to China. Global alumina supply is projected to exceed demand by 1.79 million tonnes in 2026, which favours refiners with their own ore.

China sets the scale. Its operating alumina capacity stood at about 98.9 million tonnes a year in mid-October, with utilisation at 82.23%, according to Mysteel data published by AlCircle. Mysteel also points to tight domestic bauxite supply and compressing margins.

What this means for regions without bauxite

West Africa's shift moves refining closer to the ore. The feedstock stays the same: these refineries are built to run on bauxite, and bauxite refining leaves residue that has to be managed.

Countries with smelters but no bauxite face a different question. The United States relied on net imports for an estimated 71% of its alumina consumption in 2025, according to the USGS figure cited by Greenland Mines. Europe's new list of Strategic Projects under the Critical Raw Materials Act includes aluminium processing projects such as Project Arctial in Finland and Slovalco in Slovakia.

Non-bauxite feedstocks are one line of research. AnorTech (TSXV: ANOR) is developing a process for alumina from anorthosite, a calcium-aluminium silicate rock, at its Grønne Bjerg project near Nuuk in Greenland. The company has shipped about 15 tonnes of anorthosite for pilot-scale processing tests. Alumina recovery, energy use and product quality have not yet been demonstrated at commercial scale, as Europe Mining News notes.

What to watch

Whether SPIC's Boffa refinery stays on track for the end of 2027, and how Chalco's phase two moves after the feasibility review.
Whether CBG starts construction this year, and with which lenders.
Any construction decision for Ghana's Awaso refinery.
AnorTech's first pilot data on alumina recovery, product quality and residues.

Disclosure: ZeroWasteMetals is an independent information project run by an investor in AnorTech and Greenland Mines. Not affiliated with either company. Not investment advice.

Refining Where the Bauxite Is: Guinea, Ghana and the New Alumina Map

Guinea: five refineries by 2030

Ghana: an ambition still at study stage

The market these refineries will sell into

What this means for regions without bauxite

What to watch

Sources

Boris Hardi

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