ASI membership trends and analysis

M&E Insights, March 2021

To achieve broad impact and multi-stakeholder engagement, one of the key ingredients is membership growth.  ASI has designed a membership structure and supporting outreach strategies to encourage participation of a wide range of aluminium sector stakeholders.  At 23 March 2021, ASI has 161 members across its six membership classes.  This month we dive deeper into some key indicators regarding ASI members and membership.

Key takeaways for ASI’s first six years, 2015-2020:

• Membership numbers have grown each year between 31-82% per annum
• Production and Transformation (P&T) and Industrial Users (IU) are the ‘certifying’ membership classes and today make up 65% of ASI members
• ‘Medium’ sized members today make up 44% of turnover-based members (P&T, IU, Downstream and General Supporters), and ‘Micro’ sized members make up 69% of employee-based members (Civil Society and Associations)
• Since November 2019, 47% of new members have learnt about ASI through business partners, suppliers or customers
• Six organisations have not renewed their ASI membership since 2015 due to operational reasons, averaging one resignation per year.

1. ASI Membership growth per annum

When ASI was incorporated as a non-profit entity in 2015, the organisation counted 13 members.  Since then, ASI membership numbers have continued to grow each year between 31-82% per annum.  Figure 1 shows the year-on-year percentage and quantum growth in ASI Membership from 2015 to 2020. You can hover over all the graphs for more details.

Figure 1: ASI Membership growth per annum 2015-2020 – percentage and quantum

Membership growth continued to be positive in 2020, despite the uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and longer-term economic impacts.

2. ASI Membership by organisation size

The aluminium value chain is comprised of a broad range of company sizes in both number of personnel and annual turnover levels. The ASI membership structure is designed to be as inclusive as possible. Figure 5 shows the current breakdown of member size in the various membership classes.

Figure 2: ASI members by size and membership class (as of 23 March 2021)
Note: Membership class size definitions are given in the table below.

Figure 2 shows that for turnover-based members (P&T, IU, DS, GS), Medium-sized members are the most common, with a distribution across all sizes.  For employee-based members (Civil Society and Associations), Micro-sized members are the most common.

3. ASI Membership by class

ASI is a multi-stakeholder membership organisation.  Figure 2 shows membership growth by membership class and year.

Figure 3: ASI Membership growth by class and year as of 23 March 2021

Figure 3 highlights that the largest membership class has consistently been the Production and Transformation (P&T) membership class.  Along with Industrial Users (IU), both of these membership classes commit to certification against the ASI Performance Standard within two years of joining ASI. These two certifying classes currently comprise 65% of all ASI members.

The remaining 35% of members are comprised of:

• the Downstream Supporter (DS) membership class, which is an alternative membership option for industrial users of aluminium that wish to support the ASI work program, but are not (yet) pursuing ASI Certification.
• Civil Society (CS) organisations, which play key roles in ASI Standards development processes, including through the elected Standards Committee and various topic-focused Working Groups
• Associations (AS), which represent commercial interests in the aluminium value chain, from upstream production to downstream sectors and create a bridge to their own memberships, and
• General Supporters (GS) – organisations that are engaged with the aluminium sector in critical activities such as trading or technology development, but not directly involved in aluminium production or industrial use.

The current breakdown of membership across these 6 classes is also shown as a pie chart in Figure 3.

Figure 4: ASI Membership Breakdown (as of 23 March 2021)

4. Shifts between membership classes

The Downstream Supporters membership class, as noted above, is an alternative membership option for Industrial Users that elect not to commit to ASI Certification. These members can switch between the two member classes if their plans for ASI Certification change. Over the first 6 years of ASI, this type of shift has occurred six times, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Shifts between IU and DS membership classes (up to 23 March 2021)

5. How members became aware of ASI before joining

Since November 2019, we ask membership applicants to identify how they first found out about ASI. Figure 6 shows this data.

Figure 6: How ASI members first became aware of ASI (Nov 2019 – March 2021)

Forty-seven percent of members that responded to this question have indicated that they found out about ASI through business partners, suppliers or customers. This aligns with the ASI Certification program being primarily business-to-business in terms of uptake.  It suggests that the value-chain approach taken in the ASI work program can motivate organisations to take action on sustainability issues.

6. ASI Membership retention

ASI has, to date, maintained a very high member retention rate. Between 2015-2020 inclusive, there have been 12 ASI members that have not renewed their membership for various reasons.

Figure 7: Reasons for ASI Members not renewing their membership

Of the twelve non-renewing members in their own right, six remain under ASI membership because they either:

• were acquired by or merged with another ASI member, or
• were a subsidiary of an ASI member that subsequently joined at the Group level.

That leaves a total of six organisations that have not renewed their ASI membership since 2015, averaging one resignation per year.  These have been due to changing operational priorities and/or challenges.  This represents a 3.7% loss of membership over 6 years, or 0.6% per annum.

More details on ASI Membership

Find out more about ASI’s six membership classes from the ASI Membership Information and Application Form (pp. 10-17)