For much of the past two years, aluminium was the metal everyone loved to hate. While copper, the darling of hedge funds, has raced to one record after another, hitting $10,000 a tonne last week for the first time, aluminium, the most widely used metal after steel, lagged far behind.

As Klaus Kleinfeld, chief executive of Alcoa, the US aluminium producer, said recently: “Whenever I go around, people are saying, my God, wouldn’t it be great if aluminium would be like copper?”

Such disparaging words may now be a thing of the past. The lightweight metal, used in consumer and industrial products from cars and planes to drinks cans, has recently been winning favour in the metals community. Strategists at RBS have made it their top pick for 2011, while Macquarie, Barclays Capital and Deutsche Bank have also turned bullish.