On Friday, July 8, Hydro announced that it broke ground this week, marking the start of expansion work at its aluminum recycling plant in Rackwitz, Germany. The project will require an investment of approximately €40 million to produce 25,000 tons of HyForge per year, resulting in increased use of post-consumer scrap.
Eivind Kallevik, Executive Vice President of HydroAluminiumMetal, said: “As more and more automotive customers value sustainability, we are taking this groundbreaking step at Rackwitz to produce aluminum HyForge products, resulting in smaller diameter billets, while at the same time increasing the use of post-consumer scrap by process using a high percentage of post-consumer waste to ensure an optimal climate footprint.”
He added, “The business case shows that it is not only profitable, but also has important sustainability aspects that bring us closer to achieving our ambitious recycling goals.”
The expansion will enable Hydro to meet its target of doubling the use of post-consumer aluminum scrap from about 250,000 tons per year to more than 500,000 tons by 2025. It will also help the company achieve higher annual recovered EBITDA in the range of NOK 700 million to NOK 1.1 billion by 2025.
The new plant is expected to be operational by the end of the first quarter of 2023, when it will have 20 new employees. The plant currently produces about 95,000 tons of extruded ingots per year, but the expansion will allow the plant to produce an additional 25,000 tons of HyForge.
“We have a strong partnership with the automotive industry and with the launch of HyForge our position as its preferred partner will become even stronger. Our Rackwitz facility is in close proximity to Hydro’s key automotive customers and waste sources. The HyForge product is an ideal choice given the automotive industry’s high quality standards and rapidly increasing focus on sustainability.” Thomas Stuerzebecher, Managing Director of HydroAluminiumMetalRackwitz, said.
Once operational, the new facility will enable Hydro to offer a full portfolio of forging billet diameters, from large to small, including scrap conversion. Forged billets are aluminum billets of smaller diameter than conventional billets. These products will contain less than 4kg of CO2 per kilogram of aluminum, less than 25% of the global primary aluminum average.
Post time: Jul-14-2022