ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the birth of the international aluminium industry and of its leading actors, showing how the close group of first comers of this industry converged to the same business model. On the one hand, firms opted for scale and scope strategies; on the other hand, they opted for stable prices as a key competitive edge to contend with outlets for other non-ferrous metals. Firms were already linked through commercial agreements before the settlement of an official cartel. The core of pre-cartel arrangements was based on specific strategies on the two original patents of aluminium production (Hall’s and Héroult’s ones, both of 1886) and on clauses about the national markets’ reservations that were included in the patents sharing agreements. Yet, this kind of structure was not workable because the action of the non-ferrous international traders undermined both price stability and market sharing agreements.
