Aurubis opts to double capacity at Georgia plant

An equipment and technology contract signed by Aurubis AG provides additional detail on the Germany-based metals production and recycling firm’s intention to double the initially announced capacity at its Richmond, Georgia, scrap-fed copper refinery.

Late last year, Aurubis announced it was planning additional capital expenditures for 2023 that included a project designed to double the capacity of the Georgia facility.

Now, Aurubis has announced an equipment and technology supply contract with Germany-based SMS Group GmbH for a second plant module at its Richmond recycling plant in Georgia.

“The additional equipment will increase the capacity of the metal recycling plant in Richmond, currently under construction, from an annual 90,000 tons of complex metal scrap materials to 180,000 tons per year,” the company states.

“With the next expansion stage of our new site in Georgia, we are delivering on our ‘Driving Sustainable Growth’ strategy while also keeping mineral raw materials that are both strategically important and in high demand in the resource cycle,” Aurubis CEO Roland Harings says.

The company says the SMS modular technology it is acquiring “allows for flexible operations and quick growth in [the] dynamic United States recycling market.”

The SMS technology includes a top-blown rotary converter (TBRC), which Aurubis says is “state-of-the-art equipment used for processing complex recycling materials so that raw materials like copper, nickel, tin, precious metals and platinum group metals can be recovered in additional downstream stages.”

“By bundling the SMS Group’s extensive plant know-how with Aurubis’ unique expertise in processing and raw materials, we are creating an environment for the highly efficient recovery of metals,” Harings says. “This partnership allows us to take advantage of the enormous potential of the U.S. recycling market.”

Michael Rzepczyk, a member of the SMS executive board, adds. “We are pleased that our plants are helping Aurubis assume a leading role in multimetal recycling in the U.S. With the planned doubling of the production volume at the new U.S. site, Aurubis is taking recycling to the next level in the U.S.”

Via the technology’s modularity, Aurubis says additional components can be added, expanding the Richmond plant “to precisely meet any future requirements.”

“The modular system means we can plan a prudent market strategy that allows us to respond flexibly to the needs in the U.S., so Aurubis will benefit from the constant market growth in the U.S.," Harings adds.

Aurubis now puts a price tag of about 640 million euros ($692 million) for both phases of the project and calls the facility “the first secondary smelter specializing in multimetal recycling in the U.S., thus making a targeted investment in expanding its recycling business.”

In a 2022 interview with Recycling Today, Harings said when the Richmond plant was slated for 90,000 tons of annual capacity, it intended to take in 90,000 metric tons of circuit boards, copper cable and other recyclables that contain metal to produce 35,000 metric tons of blister copper annually. Presumably, both of those figures could now double when the plant runs at full capacity.

Aurubis says Stage 1 of the plant is scheduled to go online in the first half of 2024. The contract signed in late March with SMS refers to an anticipated second-stage production startup sometime in 2026.