Glencore, the Swiss commodity trading and mining company, will not renew its $16billion deal to purchase aluminium from Russian company Rusal.

Bloomberg reported the news and said that it would honour all existing contracts with the Russian firm.

Rusal has not been put under Western sanctions despite Russia’s continued war in Ukraine, that has been ongoing for more than a year.

The decision from Glencore would be a move to comply with its policy of not engaging in new business ties Russian companies.

The $16bn deal was signed in 2020 that saw a third of the aluminium produced by Rusal be sold to Glencore.

That aluminium is used for a variety of different industries, including metal packing.

The existing deal is effective until 2024 and includes and option to extend it into 2025.

Glencore CEO, Gary Nagle, is quoted by Bloomberg as saying: Look how well we did last year with our policy.

“We had a fabulous year doing that by trading non-Russian material. So we provided a service to the world and we had a great return on our trading business.”