Chinese aluminium smelter Henan Shenhuo Group has signed a deal to buy 300,000 tonnes of raw material alumina this year from Eurasian Resources Group (ERG), doubling its original purchases from the company, Shenhuo chairman Li Wei said on Wednesday.

ERG, which refines alumina in Kazakhstan, started shipping material to top aluminium producer China in 2019 as a long-term contract with Russia's Rusal was ending. It signed a one-year deal for Shenhuo to take 150,000 tonnes of alumina.

"The original volume was relatively small. For 2021 it is 300,000 tonnes," Li, a delegate at the National People's Congress in Beijing, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

ERG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shenhuo, which has total primary aluminium production capacity of 1.7 million tonnes a year, will use ERG's alumina at its 800,000 tonne smelter in the Xinjiang region bordering Kazakhstan.

"If possible, our Yunnan plants also want to use overseas alumina," said Li, referring to the 900,000 tonnes of smelting capacity Shenhuo has moved from its home province of Henan to Yunnan in southwest China to use cleaner hydropower instead of coal.

Domestically, the first phase of Shenhuo's 36%-owned alumina refinery in southern China's Guangxi region will start testing production in May and reach full first-phase capacity of 1 million tonnes a year in August, Li added.

Shenhuo is willing to "cooperate" with overseas companies to ensure it has enough supply of bauxite, the rock refined to make alumina, he said.

The Yunnan project has started up about 750,000 tonnes of capacity so far, while the remainder will launch in June, said Li, adding that it is unlikely Shenhuo will seek to move its Xinjiang capacity to Yunnan.

"We can use more clean energy like wind power or solar power (in Xinjiang) ... and upgrade technologies to enhance efficiency and reduce emissions," he said, adding that Shenhuo aims to build a 300,000-500,000 tonnes per year aluminium recycling facility in Henan in the next five years.

(Reporting by Min Zhang and Tom Daly Additional reporting by Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty Editing by David Goodman ) ((min.zhang@thomsonreuters.com; (8610) 5669-2105;))