Demand for Al sheets to increase 2% in 2004

Brazil's consumption of aluminum sheets used in disposable packages, aluminum foil and package covers is estimated to come to 62,000t this year, a 2.3% increase over last year, newspaper AEsectorial reported. The increase is due to high costs of other raw materials and increased exports of products that use aluminum in their packaging as well as import substitution and domestic growth, the paper said. The sector also expects to close the year with production of 9.4 billion aluminum cans, slightly lower than the 10 billion cans produced in 2002. Total estimated growth for aluminum this year comes to 8%, but the industry has different growth estimates for each subsector, the newspaper reported.