The Russian authorities surprised, and to some extent confused, some parts of the industry as news broke that it was planning to introduce a tax on Russian metal exports from the start of August for five months. Given that Russia is the worlds largest exporter of aluminium this proposed tax and what exactly it did and didn’t cover and the likely duration of the tax are among the questions we will be answering during this session. In addition, we will investigate the extent that it will/won’t impact LME prices and premiums/conversion fees across various markets.