It's a problematic outcome for an industry experiencing a "further deterioration" in market conditions but this is the root conundrum facing producers of the light metal everywhere. Things looked very different a year ago with industry leaders such as Alcoa announcing capacity closures and curtailments and smaller players throwing in the towel because of low prices. Alcoa announced the permanent closure of 291,000 tons of capacity, albeit capacity that was already under mothballs. It and other Western producers also announced production cuts totaling around 1.2 million tons of annual capacity. They duly delivered. Between November 2011, when producers started to react to falling prices, and December 2012 annualized production in the world outside of China fell by 1.1 million tons to 24.8 million tons. The next graphic, comparing annualized production in December with that a year earlier shows which regions took the biggest hits.