CBAM Cost for Aluminium Extruders in Turkey, and How to Cut It

Published 2026-10-13.

If you have bought a window frame, a curtain wall or a solar mounting rail in Europe, there is a fair chance the aluminium profile inside it was extruded in Turkey. In 2025 Turkey supplied about 207,100 tonnes of the EU's imports across two main profile categories, roughly 57.8 percent of the total, according to an SMM analysis.

Aluminium profiles are covered by the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Since 1 January 2026, the EU importer owes certificates for the embedded emissions in every tonne. This article answers what that means for a Turkish extruder and how to keep the cost down.

How big the cost can be

Estimates vary with the assumptions. An industry estimate reported by Eurometal puts the added cost at about €0.06 to €0.28 per kilogram between 2026 and 2028, depending on origin. SMM calculated a theoretical default emissions value of about 2.66 tonnes of CO2e per tonne for Turkish profiles under the 2026 method, and stressed that this is an exposure figure, not what Turkish producers actually emit.

That distinction is the whole game. The importer pays on the emissions declared. If the extruder and its billet supplier can show verified actual emissions, the importer uses those. If not, it uses EU default values, which carry a mark-up of 10 percent in 2026, 20 percent in 2027 and 30 percent from 2028.

Where an extruder's emissions come from

An extruder buys billet and reshapes it. Most of the embedded emissions sit upstream, in the primary aluminium smelted with electricity, or are much lower in recycled billet. The extruder's own furnace gas and press electricity add a smaller share. So the two levers are:

The billet. More recycled content, and primary metal from smelters on low-carbon power, with emissions data that passes down the chain.
The data. Installation-level figures for your own process and verified precursor data from billet suppliers.

Turkey's own carbon price

Turkey's emissions trading system runs a pilot in 2026 and 2027. Eurometal reported that the pilot uses full free allocation, so Turkish manufacturers pay no effective carbon price yet, and nothing can be deducted from the CBAM bill. When an effective price applies, an importer can deduct it if it is documented for the goods.

What is coming

The EU has proposed bringing about 180 more steel- and aluminium-intensive downstream products into CBAM from 1 January 2028. For an extruder who also fabricates, more of its product range may soon need the same data.

Paying for the changes

Remelt and recycling lines, furnace efficiency and rooftop solar are the projects green lenders know. Turkish exporters can look at the Türkiye Green Export Project, a €1 billion Turk Eximbank facility for green products, renewable energy, energy efficiency and working capital, described in green finance for Turkish steel and cement exporters.

Work out a shipment with the CBAM calculator, and see how EU buyers approach suppliers in how German importers lower CBAM costs.

This is general guidance, not legal advice.