Aluminum’s surge propels Chinese tycoon to $61 billion fortune

Zhang Bo, the world’s largest private producer of the metal, has a grip on the market at a critical moment for global demand. Read more at straitstimes.com.

BEIJING – When Zhang Bo took over his father’s industrial empire in 2019, it was already one of the world’s biggest producers of aluminum, the most widely used industrial metal.

Since then, the stock of his China Hongqiao Group has soared 585 per cent, quietly turning Mr Zhang into Asia’s richest metals tycoon with a fortune of about US$48 billion (S$61 billion). 

Mr Zhang, the world’s largest private producer of the metal, has a grip on low-cost output at a critical moment for global demand. He’s a supplier to China’s biggest tech firms like Huawei Technologies, Xiaomi and BYD.

Aluminum has spiked more than 25 per cent in the past year, fuelled by demand from new energy vehicles to solar panels and wind turbines, while geopolitical shocks like the war in Iran have added to volatility. The metal rose to the highest in almost four years on March 9.

The widening Middle East conflict has disrupted local smelters, which account for 9 per cent of global primary aluminum supply. An effective halt on shipments via the Strait of Hormuz, off Iran’s coast, has also choked shipments of the metal. That positions Chinese aluminum producers like Mr Zhang’s to plug emerging supply gaps if global output slows.

“Their influence and personal wealth expanded because the industrial platform they built reached a scale where the market could no longer ignore it,” Harry Yu, senior partner at family office advisory Fung, Yu & Co said of the Zhang clan. “Families like this tend to stay low-profile because their power sits in production systems and supply chains, not in branding.”