Terms of Service

The Aluminum Dispatch ("the Service") publishes market prices, supplier profiles, rankings, buyer playbooks, calculators, and a newsletter covering the Chinese aluminum industry. The Service is an editorial and data product; it is not a marketplace, brokerage, procurement agent, or financial advisor.

You must be at least 16 years old and legally capable of forming a binding contract in your jurisdiction to use the Service. If you use the Service on behalf of a company, you represent that you have authority to bind that company.

Prices, freight indices, supplier records, customs data, tariff rates, and fraud cases are compiled from public exchanges, government registries, licensed data providers, and published media. We attempt to attribute every data point on the /methodology page with its source and update cadence.

Data is provided on a best-effort basis. There can be lag, upstream errors, scraping misses, or methodology gaps. Prices and freight indices can be delayed by hours or days versus live markets. Supplier records from public registries may be out of date. You acknowledge these limits before acting on Service data.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR UNINTERRUPTED AVAILABILITY.

We do not guarantee that any price, supplier score, ranking, fraud case, or tariff figure on the Service is correct, current, or complete.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, The Aluminum Dispatch and its operators, contributors, and sub-processors are not liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, including lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, business interruption, or procurement of substitute goods or services, arising out of or in connection with your use of the Service. Our aggregate liability for any claim related to the Service is capped at USD 100 or the fees you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim, whichever is greater.

Use the Service lawfully. Do not abuse the API, scrape at rates that harm availability, attempt to bypass rate limits, reverse engineer security features, or misrepresent yourself when using forms. Do not use the Service to harass suppliers profiled on the site, or to make defamatory claims. You are solely responsible for any commercial decision you take based on Service data; we strongly recommend independent verification for any transaction over USD 10,000.

Editorial content, code, design, rankings methodology, and data compilations on the Service are the property of The Aluminum Dispatch and protected by copyright and database right. Data points sourced from third parties (exchanges, governments, Wikimedia) are used under their respective licenses; see /legal/credits. You may quote short excerpts with attribution and a link back. Systematic copying, bulk scraping, and reselling of compiled data are prohibited without written license. Images from Wikimedia Commons are used under CC-BY-SA 4.0 with the attribution shown on /legal/credits; any reuse must carry the same CC-BY-SA 4.0 terms.

Supplier profiles describe third parties. Presence or absence on the Service does not constitute endorsement. Rankings are editorial opinions based on published methodology; they are not investment or procurement advice. Fraud cases describe publicly reported incidents; we invite named parties to respond and publish their comments.

We may suspend or terminate access to the Service (including newsletter subscriptions and API keys) at our discretion if you breach these Terms, abuse the Service, or if we discontinue a feature. You may stop using the Service at any time.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the People's Republic of China, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. You and we will attempt in good faith to resolve any dispute through direct discussion for at least 30 days before initiating formal proceedings. Any dispute that cannot be resolved by discussion will be submitted to the competent courts of the People's Republic of China.

If you are a consumer in the EU, UK, Brazil, or Vietnam, this clause does not deprive you of mandatory consumer-protection rights in your home jurisdiction.

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes are announced at least 14 days before they take effect. Continued use of the Service after an update constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

If any provision of these Terms is held invalid, the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.