Any buyer would be going into a 40/60 JV with Alcoa. The terms...

Any buyer would be going into a 40/60 JV with Alcoa. The terms around this have been a significant deterrent although some of these have been cleared up I believe.

Faced with this, the obvious (non-Alcoa) buyer, Rio Tinto, decided to go after Alcan instead, buying them at the rather inflated price of $38b in 2007. AWC was trading in the $4-$5 range at that time. After acquiring Alcan, Rio probably couldn't bid for AWC on anti-trust grounds. Plus alumina became a bit of a dirty word after a rather disappointing outcome at Gove, which Rio were unable to divest via PacAl.

BHP were also keen to divesting their alumina business, spinning off S32 in 2015.

The big global players in alumina are:
Chalco and a couple of other Chinese players (busy with their own alumina expansions in China)
Rio Tinto (bought Alcan instead)
Rusal (already long on alumina)
Norsk Hydro (already long on alumina)
S32 (probably not big enough to contemplate AWC takeover)
Nalco (hasn't shown interest outside India)
EGA (busy developing own alumina business)
Alcoa

Still, it is surprising that we didn't see someone like Alcoa or Glencore make a bid when SP was down around $1.