Atlanta-based aluminum rolling mill Novelis broke ground this week on a $36mn expansion of its Greensboro, Georgia, remelting plant with a focus on boosting its automotive scrap recycling.
The upgrades, expected to be finished by the fall of 2021, will increase the company's capabilities for closed-loop recycling, or recovering clips from automotive stamping customers, and remelting the scrap to make slab for new automotive coils.
The Greensboro facility will also continue to remelt used beverage cans (UBCs) for Novelis' can sheet program.
US scrap dealers are struggling to market mixed 5000 and 6000 series aluminum clips sold to them by automotive stampers which are not part of the closed loop. Novelis has publicly committed to the process with its Ford-affiliated customers, but other end users of automotive sheet and other rolling mills have varying levels of commitment.
The stampers themselves are unable to separate the different kinds of aluminum scrap generated by automotive part production because, up until recently, they only produced steel stampings, which require little separation.
Opportunistic aluminum scrap consumers in the US, other than rolling mills, are still learning how to efficiently consume mixed 5000/6000 series automotive clips which are abundantly available at low prices on the spot market.
Dealers and non-rolling mill scrap consumers told Argus that the clips are available at about 43-48¢/lb, a significant discount to common unmixed alloy clips, which are trading at 65-75¢/lb.
Next year, Novelis expects to open its greenfield Guthrie, Kentucky, plant for heat treating and finishing aluminum automotive sheet.
