NEW YORK -- The U.S. aluminum industry booked 22.6 percent more mill product business last year and came down to the wire with mill product shipments up 14.7 percent and inventories up 5 percent.

The latest tally from the Aluminum Association, based on Commerce Department data, put the industry's total shipments, including ingot, up 18.7 percent coming into December at 8,589,385 metric tons.

The 18.7-percent gain in shipments, about 1.35 million tons, was not reflected in recent 1994 reports by Aluminum Co. of America, which reported shipments down 1 percent, Reynolds Metals Co., which reported 1994 shipments up 5.4 percent, or Alcan Aluminium Ltd., which reported an 8.7-percent gain and credited strong demand in Europe as well as the United States.

Alcoa cut its domestic primary production sharply in 1993-94; Reynolds cut production in the United States in 1993 but kept its Quebec smelter capacity running full-out, and Alcan cut production in the United States, Canada and Great Britain.

The Aluminum Association's latest tally put the U.S. aluminum industry's inventory of ingot, mill products and scrap coming into December at 1,970,879 tons compared with 1,873,809 tons reported for the end of 1993.

The latest tally by the International Primary Aluminium Institute put the total inventory held by its U.S. and Canadian members at 1,757,000 tons coming into December, down 1 percent from the end-1993 level.

The Aluminum Association tally of orders booked for aluminum sheet and other mill products was up 1,416,583 tons, or 22.6 percent last year, to 7,681,257 tons. The showing was well ahead of mill product shipments, which were running about 14.7 percent ahead of 1993 at the 11-month mark.

Some aluminum industry analysts have suggested that the good showing in the shipment column reflects a measure of hedge buying and inventory building at the end-user level and that the larger gain in the bookings column also reflected the effects of last year's rapid-fire price increases on common alloy sheet and soft alloy extrusions, and lengthening lead times at the mills.

Orders for aluminum sheet other than can stock, and for aluminum plate, were up 39 percent last year, while orders for can stock squeaked through with a 3.1-percent gain in a year that saw shipments of aluminum beverage cans jump 8.2 percent to a record 102.88 billion cans.

The gain in aluminum sheet shipments for 1994 looked more like 17 percent coming into December.

Aluminum extrusion bookings were up 31.6 percent, or 368,349 tons, to 1,532,205 tons last year; extrusion shipments at the 11-month mark were up much less--11.6 percent, or 134,849 tons, to 1,293,749 tons.