Earlier this month the Russian bauxite giant RUSAL, executed its first export in almost a month on account of the hobbling of the company’s operations as a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to shipping data placed in the public domain.
While RUSAL, reportedly, has not been a specific target of the widespread western-imposed sanctions on operations that have a direct bearing on the Russian economy, reports state that the company’s billionaire founder/owner Oleg Deripaska is being personally targeted by the sanctions which continue to seriously undermine Russia’s supply chains.
Shipping data culled from a recent Reuters report indicates that a vessel recently departed Guinea’s port of Kamsar just over a week ago after being loaded by a transshipping vessel that is known to move Russian cargo.
The shipment marks the first export of aluminium ore from Guinea’s Dian-Dian operations since March 12, the Reuters report says. No exports from other bauxite mines in Guinea have been made since February 26, the report adds. RUSAL had previously said it planned to resume exports from Dian-Dian by the end of March.
Russia’s bauxite-processing operations, a critical cog in the country’s overall economic wheel, is believed to have been seriously hobbled by the move by Australia, the world’s leading bauxite producer, to join the wider western world in banning key exports to Russia.
Long prior to events in the Ukraine, RUSAL had been at the centre of controversies with other countries, including Guyana, where it had secured the majority stake in the country’s Aroaima Mining Company.
Much of that controversy surrounded what workers have said is an authoritarian regime which Russian managers had imposed on the company’s operations, at the centre of which is the poor treatment of its Guyanese employees and its lack of respect for workers, trade unions, and industrial relations laws.
Having shut down its operations some time ago amidst sustained confrontations with workers, the company had indicated in August 2020 that it was interested in reopening its operations here having suspended them following a robust confrontation with workers during which a number of employees had been fired.
There had been reports earlier this year that government officials were due to meet with officials of the Russian company to discuss the resumption of operations in the Berbice region though there has been no report for several months confirming the commencement of talks between the two sides.
It is believed that the settlement of longstanding industrial disputes between the RUSAL management and the militant Guyanese workers, as well as the dredging of the critical Berbice River which is key to the operations of the company, will be pivotal items on the agenda of any meeting between RUSAL and the authorities here, when they eventually meet to discuss the Russian company’s return to Guyana.
