Car aluminium boost to Novelis Warrington plant

Aluminium recycler Novelis has announced the expansion of its Warrington plant, which will see its 160,000 tonne-a-year capacity grow by more than a third.

The expansion is the second part in a two-phase 6 million investment at the Thelwall Lane, Latchford site, following an upgrade to sorting and separation on its can recycling line in May this year (see letsrecycle.com story).

Funding is being used to fit a new dedicated furnace and magnetic separation and handling equipment which will be used to recycle scrap from Jaguar Land Rover production in the UK as well as an upgraded casting system.

During the process, scrap will be remelted and cast into 10-12 tonne ingots, which will subsequently be rolled back into automotive sheet at Novelis specialised facilities on the continent.

The developments will see the site, which currently employs some 135 employees, become one of the largest closed-loop recycling operations for automotive aluminium rolled products in Germany according to the company.

Expansion

Erwin Mayr, senior vice president and president of Novelis Europe said: With the commissioning in Latchford, we are expanding our recycling capabilities and developing efficient manufacturing systems along our automotive supply chain.

Responding to the realities of our increasingly resource constrained world and demands for a more sustainable economy, Novelis is transforming its business model to be largely based on closed-loop recycling.

The project is the latest in a series of recycling expansion projects launched by Novelis over the past two years, totalling an estimated 680 million (570 million). In May, Novelis launched a new body sheet made from a minimum of 90% recycled aluminium (see letsrecycle.com story).

Last year, it also announced plans to increase the recycled contents of products across all its international operations to 80% by 2020 (see letsrecycle.com story).

A subsidiary of Asian aluminium and copper producer Hindalco Industries, the company operates in 11 countries internationally and plans to increase its recycling capacity to 2.1 million tonnes by 2015.