ALUMINIUM-Major market developments in September

LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Production restarts and lacklustre demand will prevent aluminium prices from making significant upside progress in the coming months, and if anything they will favour a move lower, analysts say. While inventories of the metal have stopped accumulating for now, they have levelled off at very high levels, with no signs of being drawn down to any great extent. "Stocks at least have stopped rising. That's encouraging, but there's still too much capacity being reopened, particularly in China for prices to rally much from here," said Citigroup analyst David Thurtell. Independent consultant Angus MacMillan said fabricators had been restocking recently, but only because they had run their inventories down to very low levels. "There's not going to be any great surge in underlying demand much before the second half of 2010," he said. Massimo Rossi, a senior analyst at industry consultants CRU Group, said sentiment was neutral to negative and he expected prices to trade sideways unless there was some poor economic news. He did not rule this out. "Investors are starting to question the strength of the recovery and whether we will see another drop in economic activity later on in the year," Rossi said. At 1500 GMT the London Metal Exchange (LME) three-months price was indicated at $1,850/60 a tonne. Below are some of the more significant recent developments in production, stocks and prices that may influence the direction of the market in 2009. PRODUCTION: Sept 30 - Noranda Aluminum Holding Corp said it has initiated steps to return operations to full effective capacity at its New Madrid aluminium smelter in the United States. The company has recalled 38 hourly workers in preparation for the restart of its third potline in early October. [ID:nWNAB4907] Sept 24 - Sterlite Industries India said a chimney under construction at Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd (BALCO), Korba collapsed. The chimney is at a power plant associated with a 325,000 tonnes per year (tpy) aluminium expansion project. Sept 23 - United Company RUSAL said it had appealed in Guinea against a local court's decision to retake its alumina unit and was considering an international arbitration in Paris. A court in Guinea, the world's biggest exporter of bauxite, said earlier this month the 2006 sale of the Friguia alumina refinery to UC RUSAL was unlawful, and the Guinean state was retaking ownership of its largest industrial operation. [ID:nLN643964] Sept 21 - Daily average primary aluminium output rose to 63,000 tonnes in August from a revised 62,800 tonnes in July, provisional figures from the International Aluminium Institute (IAI) showed. Primary aluminium output in China rose to 1.153 million tonnes in August from 1.088 million in July. [ID:nLL692586] Sept 18 - India's Hindalco Industries expects output from its Utkal alumina project in the eastern state of Orissa to start by around July 2011. [ID:nBMA005957] Sept 18 - Indian state-run National Aluminium Co (NALCO) said it had got the federal government's nod for a bauxite mining lease in Andhra Pradesh state, where it plans to build a refinery. NALCO said it was planning to build a 1.4 million tpy alumina refinery in the Visakhapatnam district of the state. [ID:nDEB002980] Sept 17 - India's NALCO said it is likely to sign a joint venture agreement for a greenfield aluminium smelter in Iran in the next few months. NALCO plans to build a 310,000 tpy smelter and a power plant in Iran with Iran's Kerman Development Organisation. [ID:nBOM407608] Sept 17 - Rio Tinto Alcan said it is preparing to restart idled production capacity at its Vaudreuil alumina refinery in Quebec, Canada. The company said market conditions warranted restarting the 25 percent of capacity idled last January. [ID:nWNAB0753] Sept 15 - Alcoa's AWAC has opened the Juruti bauxite mine in Brazil and said initial output at the mine will ramp up to 2.6 million tonnes per year. The company also said the 2.1 million tpy expansion of its Alumar alumina refinery in Sao Luis, Brazil is on schedule for commissioning later this autumn. [ID:nWNAB9726] Sept 11 - The annual rate of primary U.S. aluminium production tumbled 40.1 percent to 1,570,783 tonnes in August from 2,622,839 tonnes in August 2008, and was down 1.5 percent from July's annual rate of 1,594,096 tonnes, the Aluminum Association said. [ID:nN11456240] Sept 11 - China currently has 20-30 percent excess production capacity of both primary aluminium and alumina, the chairman of China's top aluminium firm Chalco <2600.HK> said. [ID:nPEK18496] Sept 11 - China produced 7,867,400 tonnes of primary aluminium in the first eight months of the year, down 9.5 percent from a year earlier. Production of alumina fell by 6.6 percent over the same period to 14,839,300 tonnes. [ID:nAPI000623] Sept 10 - United Company RUSAL said it has completed a $300 million upgrade of its Krasnoyarsk plant aimed at making the smelter more environmentally friendly. [ID:nLA592939] Sept 9 - Emirates Aluminium (Emal), planned to be the world's largest single aluminium smelter, is 60 percent completed, Arabic language newspaper Al-Khaleej said, citing a company executive. In March, Dubal Aluminium Co, which owns Emal jointly with Mubadala Development Company, said the first phase with a 700,000 tpy capacity would come online in December. [ID:nL9670968] Sept 7 - Venezuela has fallen behind with exports of alumina to clients including Glencore because a lack of investment and low prices for basic materials has hit output at the state-owned Bauxilum company. Production is expected to drop to 1.4 million tonnes this year from 1.6 million tonnes in 2008. [ID:nN07240250] Sept 3 - Jamaica's St. Ann Bauxite Partners Ltd plans to return to nearly full production within three months, its principals said. The company now operates at 64 percent of capacity, producing 3 million tonnes o