Each year, Antaike, the government media company that belongs to the CNIA, holds a conference on the China aluminium industry. It is usually held in the last 2 months of the year, but in a southern China city, the northern cities being too cold by then.

It has to be one of the worst conferences in the industry. We mentioned some of the problems in a post almost 2 years ago - see here. Last year was no better.

In 2013 however, they have sunk to new lows. The conference hotel (and we understand some of the nearby hotels) have agreed to only accept bookings for the conference dates provided you are a registered attendee of the conference. And forget about booking a meeting room. There aren’t any available.

What’s more, they have scheduled the conference to a Saturday and Sunday, immediately before the American Thanksgiving week. Why on earth, I hear you ask, would they put it on a Saturday and Sunday? Because the event has been bumped to make room for a Chalieco event being held immediately after. Chalieco, being the engineering arm of Chalco and a very big player in CNIA and Antaike, have made an arrangement with a new upstart group called IBAAS.

IBAAS is the brainchild and creation of an Indian guy, whom I am told was previously part of ICSOBA. Now, ICSOBA is a learned organisation with a fine reputation for its technical side. IBAAS is trying to muscle its way into ICSOBA’s space, by tying with the Chinese. It’s just a shame that Antaike sold out its clients for the sake of some political machinations.

(Sorry about so many acronyms!)

The bottom line is, AZ China has elected not to attend. We would have only attended as “outsiders”, since they refuse to allow us to register as a local company (the registration fees are much higher for foreigners), but now we can’t even do that.

While we always look forward to meeting up with our clients, many of them have told us that they also will not be attending. And who can blame them.