South China Region Aims High in Aluminum Industry

South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region plans to turn its Bose City into an aluminum industrial base in the country or even in Asia by 2010, according to regional government officials.

The region plans to realize an annual output value of 100 billion yuan (about 14.7 billion U.S. dollars) from the aluminum industry in Bose by 2010, local officials said at a recent conference.

By then, Bose city will produce 5 million tons of alumina worth 20 billion yuan a year, and 2 million tons of electrolytic aluminium and aluminum alloy with an output value of 40 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, the city will invest in a series of aluminum processing projects.

China's proven reserves of bauxite, the raw material to make aluminum, stand at 2.66 billion tons. More than 90 percent of the reserves are located in Shanxi, Guangxi, Henan and Guizhou.

The prospective reserves of bauxite in Guangxi were estimated to be 1 billion tons.