Sadly Alcoas market share has decreased due to poor planning quite a few years ago. The "new" management group that took over in 2000 (and are mostly still there) had a view that the company had to increase capacity to "make it the biggest alumina producer in the world" so they bought every busted-down plant on earth - even if they were already closed due to high operating costs. The head of the company, Mr Alain Belda, expressed a goal to make Alcoa a $40b company by 2003, meaning he wanted it to turn over 40 billion a year - but it had to increase capacity dramatically to do so and that meant the purchase of those broken down or old or poor producing plants that no-one else wanted. When it is costing you two to three times the sale cost just to produce it, a plant cant run for very long without dragging the whole company down with it. Unfortunately Alcoa has many of these. It turns out that they invested into the top of the cost curve instead of the bottom of the curve and that has come back to bite them - the lower cost producers are snaring the market and Alcoa is being relegated to the back of the que as they try to play catch-up with out-dated plants and technology. It appears that they have been way too late in realising this and attempting to put things right, the horse has already bolted and the competitors are far better positioned to maintain their positions in the world market. It would appear that unless Alcoa dramatically rationalise their operations and divest themselves of all the old, broken-down, dead-wood plants that they have accumulated over the last 16 years, these high-cost mines, refineries and tertiary operations will continue to drag the company down and may put it in a vulnerable position whereby a Rio or similar could take them over in one single hit and Alcoa would cease to exist. Sad but true...