Aluminium prices surged to four-year highs as Iranian strikes on two major Middle East producers over the weekend raised the risk of a prolonged supply shock.

Benchmark aluminium on the London Metal Exchange was up 4.7 per cent to $3,453 a metric ton at 1048 GMT. Prices of the metal used in the transport, construction and packaging industries touched $3,492 earlier in the session.

Aluminium Bahrain, which runs the world’s largest single-site smelter, said it was assessing the damage from the Iranian strikes. Emirates Global Aluminium, meanwhile, said its plant sustained “significant damage”.

Alba said this month that it was shutting smelting lines representing 19pc of its capacity.

“Iran’s strikes on Middle Eastern aluminium plants are threatening to send a fragile market into crisis, raising the prospect of record prices,” Britannia Global Markets said.

“The conflict’s impact is being amplified because constraints on production elsewhere have eroded global inventories, leaving the market with little buffer against shocks.”

Aluminium prices hit a record $4,073.50 a ton in March 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a top producer of the metal.

Stocks of aluminium in LME-approved warehouses have dropped more than 60pc since last May to 418,675 tons.