When giant excavators roar and tear open the red surface of the Bofa region in Guinea, what is revealed is not the high-grade rich ore that the outside world is eagerly seeking, but a gray white rock that many people overlook. While global mining giants are vying for top tier mining areas with alumina content exceeding 55%, Aluminum Corporation of China Limited has played a crucial role here by investing $1 billion to build the first independently constructed overseas alumina refining base.

In June 2026, Aluminum Corporation of China Limited launched the construction of an alumina refinery in the Bofa region of Guinea. The total investment of this project is about 1 billion US dollars, with a designed annual output of 1.2 million tons of alumina. It is also the first overseas alumina deep processing base independently built by Aluminum Corporation of China Limited, marking a new breakthrough in the company's overseas industrial chain layout.

Guinea has abundant reserves of bauxite resources, with proven recoverable reserves reaching 7.4 billion tons, accounting for 25% of the global total reserves. Among them, the ore quality of the Bokai and Sangairedi mining areas is excellent, with an alumina content of over 55%, thin soil cover, shallow burial, and can be directly open-pit mined. The mining conditions are very favorable.

Compared to high-quality and high-grade mining areas in Guinea, the alumina content of ore in the Bofa mining area ranges from 34% to 54%, which is slightly inferior in grade. But its ore has extremely low active silica content, low smelting losses, and controllable refining production costs. At the same time, the proven reserves in the Bofa mining area are as high as 1.75 billion tons, and according to the existing production capacity plan, it can be stably mined for up to 60 years. For Chinalco, stable and sufficient resource reserves with controllable costs are far more strategically valuable in the long term than simply pursuing high-grade ores.Editor/Gong Ziwei