What does the UK CBAM count for an aluminium extruder?
For aluminium products, HMRC's UK CBAM guidance counts fuel and process emissions from re-melting, alloying, extrusion, casting, rolling, forging, drawing, annealing and surface treatment, plus the billet's embodied emissions. Cutting, welding and finishing are left out, and forming makes no PFC emissions.
Inside the boundary
- Raw material preparation: pre-heating, re-melting and alloying.
- Forming: extrusion, casting, hot and cold rolling, forging, drawing.
- Finishing activities such as sizing, annealing and surface preparation and treatment.
- Emissions control.
Outside the boundary
- Cutting, welding and finishing of aluminium products.
- Grid electricity, which the UK CBAM does not count until at least 2029.
Billet is usually the biggest part
Unwrought aluminium and aluminium products you buy are precursors. HMRC says primary and secondary aluminium should be treated separately where known, as each has different embodied emissions. Ask each billet supplier whether its metal is primary or secondary and for its verified figure.
What Senseible does here
Senseible keeps billet purchases by supplier and tonnes next to your gas and LPG invoices, so the precursor and process parts can be built separately. We build the figure from your records and check every figure in-house; for the UK it must then be verified by a verifier accredited for UK CBAM. Have your own verifier? Send it to them.
Sources: HMRC, UK CBAM monitoring, reporting and verification technical guidance (October 2026)
Last reviewed 2026-11-02.