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Rolled aluminium giant, Novelis Inc., has made an investment of $15.8 million in the construction of a new line that will recycle painted scrap aluminium into the metal needed to produce rolled aluminium sheet.
The new continuous casting line will be installed at the company's production facility in Pieve Emanuele, Italy, and follows a recent commitment from Novelis to increase the amount of recycled metal it uses in its rolling operations around the world from 34%% today to 80% by 2020.
The Pieve Emanuele facility is an integrated continuous casting, rolling and finishing operation. The aluminium sheet and coil produced at the facility is sold to distributors and end users in a number of industrial and construction markets.
The plant also supplies aluminium coil to the nearby Novelis mill at Bresso, where it is processed into pre-painted, textured and bright finish material for use in transport, construction and industrial applications. Applications include roofing, architectural cladding and domestic appliances.
The company says that painted the scrap generated during the production processes in its Italian operations, as well as other low-grade used aluminium from external sources, will be recycled into high quality rolled aluminium on the new equipment.
Novelis claims that recycling aluminium uses only 5% of the energy required to make the metal from raw materials and avoids 95% of the greenhouse gases associated with primary aluminium production.
The use of continuous casting technology also brings logistical advantages as a key production step is brought in-house, thus saving transport and other costs.
Furthermore, the company says that the investment at Pieve will also free up capacity where it is needed elsewhere in the Novelis Europe system to meet the growing demand for other high-end products such as can body sheet and automotive sheet.
Installation of the new line, which will include a double-chamber melting furnace, continuous casting line and ancillary equipment, will be completed by the end of 2012. The installation will be followed by a commissioning and ramp-up period.
"This is one step towards Novelis reaching our ambitious global recycling target," said Tadeu Nardocci, president of Novelis Europe and senior vice president of Novelis Inc. "It also makes sound business sense to install a fifth continuous caster at our Pieve plant so that we can better meet the demands for material across our European operations."
