Aughinish Alumina warned Ireland’s EU commissioner Michael McGrath that cutting off its exports to Russia would harm the European economy.
The Co Limerick alumina refinery recently lobbied politicians in Brussels and Dublin to push back on calls for EU sanctions to prohibit it from selling key raw material to Russia, documents show.
The Irish Times, in co-operation with the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, earlier this year reported on how Aughinish Alumina is shipping vast amounts of alumina to smelters in Russia, where it is then sold to a company supplying aluminium to Russian arms manufacturers.
The reporting prompted a Department of Enterprise investigation into Aughinish Alumina’s role in Russia’s supply chain, which is due to be completed shortly.
The review is expected to say the Government cannot rule out the possibility that Irish-produced alumina is ending up in the Russian military supply chain.
Aughinish Alumina told McGrath, EU commissioner for justice, that sanctions restricting exports to Russia could force the closure of the Irish plant, hurt the European economy and have “inconsequential impacts in Russia”.
Alumina from Aughinish “is a critical and strategic component” in Europe’s aluminium supply chain, the company said in a May 28th letter to McGrath, released in response to an EU access-to-information request.
The company issued the same warning to Government Ministers in recent weeks and has also made the same arguments to the European Commission, which will shortly begin work drafting the union’s 22nd package of sanctions targeting Russia. It is expected the EU’s executive arm will consider whether or not to include an export ban on alumina as part of those proposed measures.
The successive rounds of EU-wide sanctions are intended to make it harder and harder for Russia to continue its war, by cutting off its access to raw materials and financial revenue.
The commission had not proposed including alumina in earlier packages of sanctions, in part because of the important role Aughinish plays supplying European heavy industry.
The Shannon estuary refinery is owned by Russian metals giant Rusal, which Swedish tax authorities recently concluded remains under the control of sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
The Irish plant is a big supplier of the EU’s largest smelting facility in Dunkirk, France, the company told McGrath. Material from Aughinish filled about 10 per cent of Rusal’s “total alumina needs in Russia”, but the plant produced 37 per cent of smelter-grade alumina consumed by Europe’s industrial base, the company said.
Revised figures provided by the Central Statistics Office on Wednesday show half of the alumina – 50.25 per cent – produced at the Aughinish plant in the first quarter of this year went to Russia, up from 43 per cent last year.
During a visit to Dublin on Thursday, Estonia’s minister of the interior, Igor Taro, was asked if the increased exports of alumina from Ireland to Russia reinforced his country’s previous call for alumina exports to be included in sanctions.
“Yes,” he replied. “It is a very important issue that we don’t feed the war mechanism.”
In the Dáil, Social Democrats deputy leader Cian O’Callaghan claimed the Government’s report on Aughinish Alumina would be a “classic fudge” and that the Coalition was “hiding behind an unpublished report”.
Tánaiste Simon Harris said that when the investigation was completed the Government would “work in lockstep with the European Commission in providing any and all relevant information”.
He said Ireland “will never cherry pick” when it comes to sanctions.
“Should we arrive at a position where the European Commission makes a recommendation in relation to sanctions,” Harris said, adding that there would be “conversations about two things: about workers, absolutely, and also about crucial supply chains”.