Rusal halts aluminum supplies to Japan

Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal Japan has confirmed reports on halting aluminum supplies to Japanese traders and consumers. Rusal Japan Director Kunihiko Higashi said consumers cannot pay for supplies due to recent U.S. sanctions, TASS reported.

Higashi said the products already loaded on ships will be supplied to clients, but the remaining contracts were cancelled.

The Japanese Association for Trade with Russia and NIS says calculations are made in terms of dollars when buying aluminum. However, when they buy currency at U.S. banks the purpose of transaction shall be mentioned. So, mentioning Rusal “results in certain problems.”

According to the holding, Russia, specifically Rusal, accounts for about 15% (nearly 230,000 tons) of aluminum import to Japan.

EADaily reported earlier that Japanese companies started terminating contracts on import of metals produced by Deripaska’s company not to fall under U.S. sanctions.

Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and his companies fell under U.S. sanctions on April 6. In a few days, the holding announced possible technical defaults on some currency obligations. Afterwards, the Russian stock market started falling and affected the national currency rate as well. Consumers refuse to work with Rusal Japan any longer. London Metal Exchange and NYSE have been already closed for it.