Standards Revision Digest #2 (July 2025)

30 July 2025

July has been a period of pre-consultation on the early evolution of the revised Standards – we have engaged auditors, a sample of the ASI membership, Chinese members, technical experts and will be holding focus groups with the Indigenous Peoples Advisory Forum. On 24 July, we held an interactive webinar to share the latest developments and gather early feedback from participants. Read more below in the latest Standards Revision Digest.

Revision Timeline – where are we now?

Review of current standards

September – November 2024 

From September to November 2024 ASI conducted a review of its current standards.  The review recommended a full revision of the Standards.

Pre-launch preparations

November 2024 – March 2025

ASI’s Standards Committee with support from the ASI Secretariat discuss and develop Terms of Reference for the Revision, setting objectives and priorities for the revised standards.

Launch

3 March 2025 

ASI launches revision of its standards.

1) Two launch webinars were held on 20 March 2025.

Hear directly from the ASI team on aims and priorities for the revision.

• Watch the recording

2) Join a working group - Deadline to apply: 31 March

We are establishing six Working Groups covering the focus areas of the Standards revision: Circularity; Climate Change; Nature Positive; Human Rights/Community Impacts; Labour Rights/Health and Safety; and Chain of Custody/Claims. The Working Groups will be made up of stakeholders and subject matter experts and will act as a sounding board to the revision process, providing advice, feedback and technical expertise where appropriate. For more information on the Working Groups including how to apply to join visit our Working Groups page.

3) Send us your views

Impacted by the revision of the standards?  We would like to hear from you!

We will be running 2 periods of public consultation on the revised standards, details on how to feed in your views will published on the Revision Hub in due course.  You can send your views directly to the Standards Team via consultation@aluminium-stewardship.org.

Detailed drafting and technical input

March  – December 2025

Interested in giving expert input to our standards?  Please contact us at consultation@aluminium-stewardship.org

First public consultation on draft standards

January – February 2026 

Details on how to participate in our first round of public consultations will be published on this Hub and in the Revision Digest in late December 2025.

Reflecting and responding to consultation feedback

March – June 2026 

Second public consultation on draft standards

July – August 2026

Details on how to participate in our second round of public consultations will be published on this Hub and in the Revision Digest in late June 2026

Revise and finalise

September - December 2026

Revised Standards approved

January 2027

We anticipate the Standards will be adopted by the Board in early 2027.

ASI Performance Standard potential changes for V4

The revision process aims to ensure the ASI standards remain effective and reflect changing regulations and developments in the sector. We continue to work with our members and wider stakeholders to gather their input into the revision. In this early phase of the revision, potential changes for version 4 include:

1. Structural Adjustments:
   • Reorganisation into cross-cutting systems and thematic impact areas.
   • Separation of criteria and requirements, with conformance still assessed at the criterion level.
   • New distinction between minimum requirements (required for certification) and ‘leading practice’ requirements, which would be optional. Entities meeting a certain percentage of applicable leading practice requirements in a thematic area (e.g. Climate) would be able to make a differentiated claim, with details still actively under discussion.
2. Content Enhancements:
   • Strengthened expectations in areas including community impacts, mine closure and rehabilitation, circularity, responsible sourcing and working hours and wages.
   • New sections are proposed around climate adaptation, water recycling, aluminium-specific health and safety issues, diversity and inclusion, and tailings management
   • On GHG emissions reductions, the revised draft aims to maintain ASI’s commitment to 1.5 degree ambition. Changes to existing requirements include those related to GHG emissions reduction target setting (including recognition of alternatives to the ASI Method) and to performance (with opportunities to differentiate based on levels of reduction achieved), as well as potential shifts in the Smelter threshold criterion which currently excludes more than 60% of the sectors emissions from ASI. Novel requirements include possible indicators of investments/actions to enable long-term reduction and removals of emissions as well as climate adaptation plans and fulsome allocation of corporate emissions inventories to product portfolios.
3. Alignment with Global Frameworks:
   • Strengthened visibility on alignment with UN Guiding Principles and OECD Guidelines for Responsible Business Conduct.
   • Greater integration with standards like ISO 59001, Global Circularity Protocol, and IFC Performance Standards.
   • Alignment with the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) proposed.

Chain of Custody and Claims

The revision also aims to evolve the Chain of Custody (CoC) model to deliver more value to members and to explore what types of claims and information flow are most helpful for Entities and other stakeholders. Four main areas of work are being explored here with input from the Chain of Custody and Claims working group:

1. Streamlining the current group mass balance chain of custody, to enable ASI material and sourcing claims. This also includes discussions on the value/ demand for an additional site level mass balance offering.
2. Developing performance related claims – These could include claims related to achieving leading practice within the Performance Standard, or for example, demonstrating emissions reductions in line with the 1.5 degree aligned pathway.
3. Support for due diligence/supply chain mapping – in the short term, a new explicit requirement is proposed within the Performance Standard to ensure Entities are passing origin information to customers when requested; in the longer term ASI will explore supply chain mapping or analyses that may be useful to members
4. Product related environmental attribute claims such as product carbon footprint and recycled content. In this area, short term priorities will likely focus on developing standardised Product Category Rules (PCRs) to enable comparable claims (e.g. environmental product declarations)

Interactive webinar (24 July)

On 24 July we held a public interactive webinar to provide an update on the Standards Revision and to gather early feedback from participants. We gained useful insight from participants, which will be reflected into the standards as we continue to evolve them. Participants were particularly excited to see the proposed changes around differentiation and circularity. In general there was support for the revised Performance Standard being more ambitious than V3, and there were a number of important comments about ensuring auditability of revised requirements. If you missed the webinar, you can catch up with the recording available in English, French and Mandarin.

Looking ahead

• In September we will be incorporating input from auditors, ASI members, technical experts, Working Groups, Chinese members and IPAF into the drafts of the standards.
• We will continue regular meetings of the Working Groups and the Standards Committee to discuss and develop the content
• We plan to hold an update webinar in October and anticipate launching a first round of public consultation in Q1 of 2026.

Stay tuned for further information on the Standards Revision Hub.

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