DUBAI (Reuters) -Emirates Global Aluminium said on Wednesday that the Guinean government had wrongfully terminated an agreement with its subsidiary, Guinea Alumina Corporation, after a year-long dispute over the construction of an alumina refinery.
Guinea’s military government suspended GAC’s bauxite exports and mining operations as part of West Africa’s military-led states’ increasingly aggressive push to extract greater benefits from their vast natural resources.
The junta which seized power in 2021 in the world’s second-largest producer of bauxite, the primary ore used to produce aluminum, had demanded that miners present plans to build refineries in order to generate capital for the country.
EGA, equally owned by the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala and Dubai sovereign wealth fund the Investment Corporation of Dubai, said in a statement that it plans to pursue remedies through international tribunals.
“These actions have made the continuation of GAC’s operations and the development of an alumina refinery impossible,” Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, chief executive officer of EGA, said in the statement.
GAC will move ahead with the necessary process to make significant redundancies, which will initially affect more than 2,000 employees and contractors, the company said in the statement.
“We have maintained GAC’s employee workforce in difficult circumstances for as long as possible,” Kalban added.
Guinea’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite Guinea’s stricter regulations, bauxite exports jumped 36% to a record 99.8 million metric tons in the first half of 2025, driven by robust Chinese demand.
(Reporting by Hadeel Al Sayegh; Writing by Maxwell Akalaare Adombila; Editing by Bate Felix and Mark Porter)
