ALRO Chairman of the Board Marian Năstase said Europe is beginning to realize that industrial strength is essential for long-term economic and geopolitical resilience, during a meeting with the press.

“I believe the importance of industry is becoming clearer, especially as the European discourse has shifted toward reindustrialization,” Năstase said. “We are all starting to wake up to the reality that without industry, we have little chance of succeeding in a world where industrial backbone is what truly matters.”

According to him, the current geopolitical context has accelerated this change in mindset across Europe.

“Europe is slowly beginning to wake up,” he said. “That means every industrial company that still exists must be kept alive and strengthened. We must do everything possible to increase the level of industrialization.”

Năstase stressed that Europe must become more disciplined in how it allocates increasingly limited financial resources.

“The biggest challenge remains how money is allocated,” he said. “Because we have been in a permanent crisis, we have always been very careful with costs. But at the European level, we have often financed things we do not really need — unnecessary projects.”

He described ALRO as one of the central pillars of Romanian industry and said the company is becoming increasingly important within the wider European industrial supply chain.

“ALRO remains one of the key pillars of Romanian industry,” Năstase said. “We need to do much more to develop other industrial pillars and strengthen those that already exist. ALRO is becoming increasingly important in the European industrial chain.”

On the aluminium market, Năstase said prices have entered what he considers a structurally higher range.

“Aluminium prices have increased, and in my opinion, this is a structural increase that could stabilize somewhere between $3,000 and $3,200 per tonne,” he said. “This is partly driven by China’s decision to stop developing new aluminium production capacities, which is effectively stabilizing global supply.”

Năstase also called for stronger recycling policies both at European and national level, arguing that Europe exports too much valuable raw material instead of processing it domestically.

“We recycle far too little,” he said. “Why export raw material? Aluminium scrap is raw material. We invested energy into it, it was produced here in Europe, and yet we export it.”

He warned that exporting scrap aluminium means exporting value and capital.

“We export cheap resources and import expensive resources. It makes no sense,” Năstase said. “In reality, we are exporting value. We are exporting cash.”

He added that public policies should increasingly support circularity and value-added manufacturing.

“Exports of high value-added products remain the core strategy of ALRO, and we have never deviated from it,” he said.

Despite the company’s strong export orientation, Năstase noted that Romania’s domestic industrial base is still not developed enough to absorb significantly higher aluminium volumes.

“We continue to focus on exports because exports are our fundamental market,” he said. “Romania still does not have a sufficiently developed industry to absorb more.”

ALRO continues to prioritize sales to major international markets including Germany, the wider Western European market, the United States, South Korea, Israel and Italy.