Middle East’s top aluminum maker says main smelter damaged

Emirates Global Aluminium’s biggest metal-producing plant sustained “significant damage” during an Iranian missile and drone attack on Saturday, another blow to the region’s commodity industry from the Middle East war.

The United Arab Emirates company is the region’s biggest aluminum producer and a major supplier to global markets. Producers of energy and metals in the Persian Gulf are already cut off from global markets by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and attacks like this are likely to extend the time it takes for operations to the return to normal when the war is over.

EGA is still assessing damage from the attack on its Al Taweelah site located at the Khalifa Port industrial zone in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, the company said in a statement. It confirmed that several employees were injured, but declined to say whether operations at the facility had been suspended.
The Abu Dhabi media office earlier on Saturday said six people were injured in three fires caused by ballistic missile interception debris in the vicinity of the Kezad industrial zone. The strikes were part of a series of attacks by Iran on Gulf countries, even as the Trump administration pursued discussions around a potential ceasefire.

As the biggest non-energy industrial company in the UAE, EGA operates two smelters, one each in the emirates of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The Al Taweelah site is halfway between the cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the Khalifa Economic Zone along the Persian Gulf. The Dubai plant is in the Jebel Ali port and freezone area.

The Al Taweelah smelter produced 1.6 million tonnes of cast metal in 2025. The company had substantial metal stock offshore when Israel and the US began their war on Iran last month as well as in some overseas locations, according to the statement. It’s used that external product to help meet customer demand.

EGA has been a major international investor and is part of the UAE’s pledge to spend $1.4 trillion in the US over the next decade. The UAE has been the second-largest aluminum supplier to the US, well behind Canada, and is building the first new American smelter in decades in Oklahoma.

In the US, EGA also owns a recycling plant in Minnesota that’s allowed it to benefit from domestically produced metals selling at higher prices due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.