Shipments to Russian smelters from Aughinish Alumina have increased sharply since the invasion of Ukraine
A leading Irish metals refinery is part of an international aluminium supply chain that appears to conclude with shipments to arms producers feeding the Kremlin’s war machine in Ukraine, leaked records and public data suggests.
Trading records show that shipments to Russian smelters from Aughinish Alumina, which is located on the Shannon estuary in the west of Ireland and has been owned by the Russian aluminium group Rusal since 2006, have increased sharply since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Ireland exported $243m (£180m) of alumina to Russia in 2022, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), a data analytics website,and this rose by 55% to $376m in 2024. Aughinish is Ireland’s only producer of alumina and the largest producer of the main raw material for making aluminium in Europe, according to a 2021 report by the accounting group KPMG.
The rising trade with Russia does not appear to breach sanctions law and can be interrogated via publicly available shipping records.
