MOSCOW — SUAL Group raised production of primary aluminium for the first half of 2005 up to 517.8 thousand tones, up 12.8 percent from the same period last year.

The total volume of bauxite output for the first half of 2005 made up 2.47 million tones, up 0.7 percent from an accounting period in 2004.

The rolled metal and semi-products production for the first half of 2005 widened 14.4 percent to reach 43.8 thousand tones.

The volume of consumer goods output came to 1.84 thousand tones, down 0.6 percent.

SUAL Group is a fully vertically integrated aluminium company that ranks amongst the world's top ten aluminium producers. It comprises 19 businesses that are located in nine Russian regions and are involved in the production of bauxite, alumina, primary aluminium, silicon, semi-finished and finished aluminium products. The Group's revenue for the year ended 31 December 2003 was USD 1.7 billion. It has some 62,000 employees.

Annually, SUAL Group mines some 4.4 million tonnes of bauxite, refines more than 2 million tonnes of alumina, and produces some 890,000 tonnes of primary aluminium. It also produces more than 50,000 tonnes of silicon per annum, as well as a range of aluminium-fabricated products (including metal structures, foil, cable, cookware etc).

The Siberian-Urals Aluminium Company (SUAL) was formed in 1996 by a merger between the Irkutsk and Ural Aluminium smelters. At that time, SUAL Group incorporated only nine aluminium enterprises. Since then, SUAL has grown through a series of acquisitions that have improved its operating efficiency, while ensuring it produces sufficient raw materials to meet the Group's evolving production needs.

SUAL Holding, the management company for SUAL Group, was established in September 2000 to improve co-ordination between its businesses, shape its long-term development strategy and apply a unified investment policy.

In 2002, SUAL Group began consolidating its results from Nadvoitsy Aluminium and from SevZapProm, including the Volkhov and Volgograd Aluminium Smelters and the Pikalevo Alumina Refinery.

SUAL Group is actively upgrading its businesses. The value of its investment programme for 2004 is more than USD 115 million, which covered modernisation of the Group's alumina and aluminium operations and development of the company's production capacity. The Group has reconstructed its cable plants and operations engaged in production of semi- and finished products. As part of its modernisation programme, SUAL Group has identified as priorities the reduction of emissions and improvements to its environmental impact.

Within the Group's investment project portfolio is Komi Aluminium. The project foresees the development, construction and operation of a modern bauxite, alumina and aluminium complex in the Komi Republic, that will be based on the Middle Timan Bauxite deposit, the largest such resource in Eurasia. The design capacity of the complex is 6.0 million tonnes of bauxite, 1.4 million tonnes of alumina and 300,000-500,000 tonnes of primary aluminium per annum. Realisation of the Komi project will considerably reduce the dependency of Russia's aluminium industry on external raw material supplies.