Novelis invests in automotive aluminum recycling capacity

New York plant's sheet production capacity to increase with $48M investment.


The aluminum rolling and recycling firm Novelis, headquartered in Atlanta, has completed a $48 million investment at its automotive scrap recycling facility in Oswego, New York. The company says the project expands upon its recent growth in Oswego to meet increased demand for aluminum automotive sheet in North America.

The Oswego plant produces more than 1 billion pounds of high-quality aluminum sheet each year, Novelis reports. The facility represents the company’s first U.S. operation and is its largest wholly owned fabrication facility in North America.

The plant is equipped for aluminum scrap remelting, ingot casting and hot and cold rolling. The Oswego facility generates premium aluminum products used primarily by the beverage can, building and construction and automotive markets, as well as in multiple industrial product applications, Novelis says. 

Including the newly completed recycling center, over the past five years, Novelis has invested more than $400 million in Oswego and hired more than 430 new employees, with nearly 250 additional jobs planned by the year 2020, according to the company.

The recycling investment includes an 81,000-square-foot building capable of processing, sorting and storing automotive scrap aluminum generated by the Oswego aluminum production plant, the company says. Additional investments were made in infrastructure improvements such as road and parking upgrades to handle increased truck traffic.

“As the leader in automotive closed-loop recycling, one of our top priorities is to create a sustainable supply line between Novelis and automakers, which will preserve the aluminum’s value, reduce greenhouse gases and increase economic efficiencies for our customers,” says Marco Palmieri, senior vice president, Novelis and president, Novelis North America. “This investment will help us meet new demands of automakers as they turn towards lightweight aluminum to create more fuel-efficient vehicles.”

The recycling facility features what Novelis calls its best-in-class scrap recovery and conversion technology. Novelis says the recycling center has been designed to meet the needs of North American automakers. When fully operational the facility will process as much as 10,000 metric tons of recycled scrap per month, Novelis says.

Since 2011, Novelis has invested more than $550 million to raise its global automotive sheet capacity to 900,000 metric tons by the end of 2015. The company predicts that sales of automotive aluminum, which currently represents about 9 percent of its total shipments, may climb to as much as 25 percent of shipments by 2020. To support the expected demand for automotive aluminum, Novelis says it will allocate about 80 percent of Oswego facility’s capacity to the automotive market.