Six countries account for more than 85% of the world's bauxite production. They are Australia, China, Brazil, India, Guinea and Jamaica.
Vietnam is in the early stages of its mining development but may actually have more bauxite reserves than any country other than Australia. The U.S. has very little bauxite mining activity at all, and our reserves are inconsequential.
With these numbers, it's actually shocking that the U.S. has any aluminum production industry at all.
what about all of those recycled aluminum cans? Do they ship them out to other countries?
I’ve seen bits of the bauxite mines in Jamaica.
Aluminium smelting is all about the electricity cost as it uses massive amounts. That is why remote Iceland is a large aluminium producer - by living on top of a volcano they get cheap geothermal electricity and that’s enough to ship bauxite there to be smelted. Supposedly Canada has something similar with very cheap hydroelectricity in some areas.