OREANDA-NEWS. August 1, 2011. UC RUSAL announces the survey of RUSAL smelters by Dong Hwa and Sungwoo who are two of Korea's largest automotive part suppliers. They were accompanied by Toyota Tsusho, the trading arm of the Toyota Group of Companies and one of RUSAL's strategic partners in the region.

In order to agree the direction for future cooperation, the representatives of Toyota Tsusho and Dong Hwa recently visited the Krasnoyarsk Aluminium Smelter (KrAZ), while Toyota Tsusho and Sungwoo visited the Irkutsk Aluminium Smelter (IrkAZ). The Korean customers have been supplied by RUSAL for many years, enabling their strategy to support the Korean car industry which has been growing at more than 10% per annum in recent years. The survey was to examine the current production capacities as well as to determine the potential increasing of production of aluminum alloys for cast wheels.

In 2011, RUSAL is on schedule to export 240,000 tonnes of primary foundry alloys for the automotive industry which represents around 24% of RUSAL's total exports of alloys. These alloys are produced at the Bogoslovsk, Bratsk, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Novokuznetsk, Nadvoitsy, Sayanogorsk, and the Ural aluminum smelters. RUSAL has committed to expand and develop supplies of automotive alloys to the main industry participants in the key Asian markets of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, in addition to its growing presence in the USA, and Europe.

Junichiro Honda, a representative of Toyota Tsusho who visited KrAZ, commented: "I was impressed by what I saw at the smelter and in particular the scale of production, quality control processes, and the wide range of products." At approximately 1 million tonnes of capacity each, the Krasnoyarsk and Bratsk smelters are currently the largest single site facilities in the world and they continue to expand and develop their product range to meet changing consumer demand.