Aluminium, unlucky number 13 in the periodic table, must be feeling particularly jinxed. In the past month or so, prices have fallen to five-year lows while physical stocks have neared record highs. Rio Tinto Alcan, the biggest producer, has canned plans to invest in a $10bn smelter in Saudi Arabia, leaving its fellow Saudi investors to mothball production. Jobs elsewhere are going across the board. Alcoa of the US is shedding 13 per cent of its workforce. Chinalco, China’s number one producer, is meanwhile trying to avoid the same fate by slashing wages instead. China’s metals trade body reckons selling prices will otherwise remain below production costs this year, triggering plant closures.

Japan has now begun its own efforts at consolidation. Reports have surfaced that two conglomerates, Furukawa Electric and Showa Denko, are discussing a merger of their aluminium operations. Both are bit players in the sector. Furukawa Electric, big in electric wires and cables, produces just 400,000 tons of aluminium a year; Showa Denko cranks out a mere 100,000 tons. Together their output is an eighth that of Rio Tinto Alcan (not including bauxite and alumina). Quitting would appear sensible, especially for Showa Denko. Compared with most of its other businesses – a suite of petrochemicals, chemicals and electronics units – aluminium gobbles up capital and produces wafer-thin margins. According to its own estimates, Showa Denko’s aluminium operations barely broke even in 2008.