Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 21 October 2026: Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside oil and gas, today announced that half of the reduction cells at the company's Al Taweelah smelter have now been restored and restarted.

EGA's Al Taweelah smelter entered emergency shutdown on 28 March when an Iranian attack on Khalifa Economic Zone Abu Dhabi led to a full evacuation of the Al Taweelah site.

EGA teams are progressively restoring and restarting each reduction cell, working along the three potlines at Al Taweelah in parallel. The first restored reduction cell was restarted on 26 May.

So far, 631 of the 1,262 reduction cells at Al Taweelah have been restarted.

After restart, a reduction cell typically takes a week to stabilise and reach full production. Some hot metal is used to restart subsequent reduction cells, with the balance delivered to EGA's Casthouse to be cast into finished aluminium products.

Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, Chief Executive Officer of Emirates Global Aluminium, said today: "With our sustained good progress, we continue to expect that we will reach full production at Al Taweelah smelter during Q1 2027. The restoration of Al Taweelah is the biggest challenge we have ever faced as a company. Thousands of dedicated colleagues are working around the clock to bring back Al Taweelah, and EGA, stronger than ever before."

Following the emergency shutdown, molten aluminium froze in every reduction cell at Al Taweelah, leaving solid metal pads weighing up to 45 tonnes to be removed. Almost 80 per cent of reduction cells can then be restarted. The remaining reduction cells require repairs, potlining demolition and relining, based on the duration the reduction cells had been operating before the incident.

Periodically cutting out, repairing and relining reduction cells at the end of operating life is routine in aluminium smelting. Compared to the normal rolling maintenance programme, EGA has more than tripled its capacity to safely repair and restart reduction cells at Al Taweelah through optimising workflows, adding equipment, strengthening people capability, and innovating new industrial processes.

During the restoration, EGA has accelerated the deployment of a new technology pilot at Al Taweelah that would otherwise have required operating reduction cells to be shutdown during construction. The pilot E40 upgrades to 13 DX technology reduction cells will be used to prove the performance of the technology before industrialisation across all 808 DX technology cells at Al Taweelah. 

If applied to all DX reduction cells, EGA's E40 technology has the potential to increase hot metal production by 67 thousand tonnes per year.

Al Taweelah alumina refinery continues to produce alumina at approximately 50 per cent capacity. While the alumina refinery is technically ready to ramp-up further, timing will be based on supply chain dynamics and the optimisation of EGA's alumina sourcing strategy.