Alliance Metals enters the US zorba market

US secondary aluminum smelter Alliance Metals has started buying domestic zorba for the production of cast alloys.

Alliance president Larry Gitman confirmed to Argus that the company intends to make alloy from zorba but did not specify what kind of separation equipment it is using.

Zorba is a mixed metal package produced by automotive shredders that consists mostly of aluminum scrap. It can be recycled into aluminum products after mechanical, wet or hand separation removes the non-aluminum scrap components, such as brass, copper, zinc and magnesium.

The company's recently-established Leighton, Alabama, smelter is still in the start up phase and has yet to reach commercial capacity, according to market sources. It will target an annual output of 54,446 metric tonnes (t) with a 25t rotary furnace and a 30t reverberatory furnace, according to information from an Alabama air permit.

The company tried to establish a smelter in La Paz County, Arizona, between 2019 and the first half of 2020, but after a lengthy struggle with municipal authorities over re-zoning the property, the company chose the new location.

Zorba export woes may be opportunity

While there are more than a dozen companies operating either wet or dry media separation systems in the US, only three domestic players, Spectro Alloys, Audubon Metals, and Huron Valley Steel Company, have integrated separation and smelting operations.

Alliance's move to processing zorba comes amid several other large related investments in the American south, including Audubon Metals' ongoing construction of a second plant in Corsicana, Texas; Alter Trading's planned heavy media joint venture with Toyota Tsusho Amerca in Little Rock, Arkansas; and Schnitzer Steel's Georgia media plant, which began operating in April.

As the export market for US zorba to Asia becomes more volatile and hard to predict, US processors hope to capitalize on small-to-mid-sized domestic shredders' preference not to wade into the container market.

Domestic zorba buyers are able to accept lower metallic content zorba packages than many of those going to export, giving them price leverage over those shredders unable to ship to China or Malaysia because of quality issues.

By John Betz