Global aluminium rolling and recycling concern Novelis has broken ground on a $250 million aluminium recycling and casting centre at its plant in Nachterstedt, Germany.
Projected to be the world’s largest aluminium recycling centre, the new facility has been constructed adjacent to the company’s existing aluminium rolling mill.
With opening scheduled for 2014, the centre will, the company says, enable the production of 400,000 metric tonnes annually of aluminium sheet ingot from recycled material.
“This investment represents another step in delivering on our commitment to dramatically increase the recycled content of the rolled aluminium sheet we provide to our world-class global customers,” says Novelis president and CEO Phil Martens, “while also signifying our long-term commitment to the European market.”
The advanced sorting, processing and casting capabilities of the new Nachterstedt operation will move the company closer to its goal of 80% recycled content by 2020, Martens adds.
Novelis says the new centre will help to support its drive to increase end-of-life recycling in Europe, where the company claims to be “already the leading recycler of aluminium beverage cans”.
The Nachterstedt centre will process used beverage cans as well as other forms of aluminium scrap from across continental Europe.
Novelis expects the centre to create 200 new jobs when it is commissioned in mid-2014.
The Nachterstedt expansion is the latest in a series of recycling and casting expansion projects launched by Novelis over the past two years, totaling nearly $450 million, including the commissioning in November 2012 of the company’s new integrated recycling and casting centre in Yeongju, Korea.
These projects, and others underway across the world, are designed to increase the US company’s recycling and casting capacity to 2.1 million tons by 2015.
For fiscal year 2012, Novelis operated in 11 countries with more than 11,000 employees and reported revenue of $11.1 billion.
