Based on the UK Government’s Critical Minerals Recycling and Midstream Processing Capability Assessment (Frazer-Nash, March 2025)
The UK Government’s March 2025 Critical Minerals Recycling and Midstream Processing Capability Assessment marks a pivotal moment for the aluminium sector. For the first time, aluminium has been officially recognised as a critical mineral, placing it alongside lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements in the UK’s industrial resilience and supply chain strategy.
This recognition positions aluminium at the heart of the UK’s push for sustainable growth, circular economy transformation, and secure access to strategic materials. It also strengthens the platform for ALFED, the UK Aluminium Alliance, and wider stakeholders to advocate for long-term policy support and investment in domestic capability.
Aluminium Confirmed as a UK Critical Mineral
Aluminium is explicitly listed in Table 1 of the assessment as a UK critical mineral. The report highlights its essential role in:
- Transport, aerospace, and automotive manufacturing
- Energy and communications infrastructure (e.g. grid expansion, cabling)
- Defence and security supply chains
- Packaging, construction, and lightweight structures
- Net Zero enablers including electric vehicles, renewable energy, and battery components
The criticality of aluminium to national defence has been further reinforced by NATO’s statement on defence industrial resilience, which lists aluminium among the key materials essential to transatlantic security and military capability. NATO’s position reflects aluminium’s use in military-grade alloys, armoured vehicles, naval vessels, and aerospace components, and underlines the need for secure, scalable, and domestic sources of supply within the alliance.
The report identifies aluminium as one of the top five critical minerals by UK consumption value (£), emphasising its economic as well as strategic importance.
What Midstream Capability Means for Aluminium
The report defines “midstream processing” as the set of activities that convert raw or recovered material into a form suitable for final use. This includes remelting, alloying, casting, rolling, extrusion, and powder production.
In the aluminium context, midstream capability means upgrading UK scrap and dross into high-specification alloys, enhancing secondary production for use in transport, aerospace, construction and engineering, reducing dependency on imports of semi-finished and primary aluminium, and creating a more circular, lower-carbon domestic value chain.
The assessment finds the UK’s midstream processing capacity to be insufficient, fragmented, and underdeveloped across many critical minerals, including aluminium.
Four Key Implications for the UK Aluminium Sector
1. Domestic Recycling and Material Recovery
The report prioritises expanding UK-based recycling capacity, particularly through recovery from end-of-life products and industrial by-products. For aluminium, this aligns with long-standing calls to increase high-grade domestic scrap utilisation, improve collection, sorting, and alloy-specific tracking, and build shared infrastructure for dross treatment and closed-loop recovery.
A national scrap strategy, supported by granular commodity code reform, is seen as essential to unlocking material security and economic value.
2. Investment in Midstream Processing Facilities
The UK’s lack of midstream processing capacity is described as a critical gap both economically and strategically. The report recommends direct support for remelting and secondary alloy production facilities, R&D into impurity management and process innovation, and shared-use pilot lines and demonstrator infrastructure.
This aligns with the UK Aluminium Alliance’s proposal for a Centre of Excellence for Aluminium Innovation, supporting development and bridging the gap between academic research and industrial application, as well as harmonising with the wider metals sector.
3. Procurement and Policy Levers
The report points to policy uncertainty and lack of procurement alignment as key inhibitors to growth in midstream capability. For the aluminium sector, it reinforces the case for aluminium to be explicitly included in Net Zero procurement frameworks, public funding to support strategic onshore reprocessing, and a greater emphasis on circularity, carbon footprint and local content in contracts and regulation.
These themes mirror ongoing advocacy by ALFED and the UK Aluminium Alliance.
4. Flagship Projects and Capability Mapping
To raise visibility and attract investment, the report recommends launching high-profile demonstration projects showcasing UK processing and recycling of critical minerals, as well as the development of a national database of facilities, capacity, and processing readiness.
Both are directly aligned with industry proposals for a UK-manufactured product using 100% recycled aluminium, and for greater transparency in current UK alloying, casting, and extrusion infrastructure.
What This Means for ALFED and the UK Aluminium Alliance
The formal designation of aluminium as a critical mineral allows ALFED and the UK Aluminium Alliance to strengthen their engagement with DBT, DESNZ and Innovate UK, and to press for aluminium’s full inclusion in future updates to the UK Critical Minerals Strategy. It provides a platform to make a stronger case for public investment in domestic processing infrastructure, access to innovation funding, and fair treatment in future industrial and Net Zero policies.
This recognition also allows the UK Aluminium Alliance to advocate more assertively for the role of aluminium as a circular economy enabler, essential to national supply chain resilience and the energy transition. The designation reinforces the urgency of developing a coordinated, cross-sector strategy for aluminium, underpinned by accurate data, infrastructure mapping, and long-term industry-government collaboration.
Next Steps
ALFED will continue to engage across government and industry to ensure aluminium is fully recognised within the evolving Critical Minerals Strategy and that the sector is eligible for forthcoming support schemes.
We encourage all members to:
- Read the full report here
- Consider how your organisation could contribute to a UK aluminium capability map or national demonstrator project
- Contact ALFED to support the development of a unified scrap strategy and processing roadmap
