Constellium’s West Virginia facility receives Department of Defense grant

Constellium SE, with global headquarters in Amsterdam, has announced that its facility in Ravenswood, West Virginia, will receive a grant of nearly $9.5 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to increase the throughput, quality and performance of its cold-rolled aluminum.

The Department of Defense’s Cornerstone OTA awarded the funding, which the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, will manage.

Constellium says it will use the funds to perform electrical, mechanical and hydraulic system upgrades to Ravenswood’s 144-foot cold-rolling mill and to add automation and process controls.

The investments will not have an impact on the overall amount of scrap the Ravenswood facility consumes, as the company says it does not use scrap in producing products for its defense contracts.

The company says the mill is critically important for the manufacture of high-performance aluminum plate for ballistic and blast protection of military vehicles. Army and Marine Corps modernization programs will require increased capacity of the U.S. industrial base to produce cold-rolled plate over the next decade. In coordination with Cornerstone and ARL, Constellium also will invest in developing manufacturing processes and armor plate that will optimize the additional capacity and process controls of the upgraded mill.

“This investment by the Department of Defense will enable us to meet the increased demand for cold-rolled plate over the next five to 10 years and also significantly improve the performance of armor against constantly evolving threats,” says Buddy Stemple, CEO of Constellium Rolled Products Ravenswood. “We are very excited to have this opportunity to help protect our troops.”

Constellium’s Ravenswood facility supplies a broad portfolio of rolled products to the Department of Defense and its original equipment partners.

The mill’s casthouse specializes in high-purity casting for the aerospace plate market as well as casting for our transportation, industry and defense products and consists of five DC furnace complexes with capacities ranging from 40 to 100 tons, capable of producing coil and plate products.

The site’s hot mill produces a wide variety of specifications for aerospace and general engineering plate along with wide coil for transportation markets and consists of 28 furnaces.

The Ravenswood cold mill is one of the industry’s widest mills, producing an array of thicknesses and widths for the transportation and marine markets. The cold-rolling shop consists of four-stand and five-stand mills, a heavy-gauge slitter, wide tension leveling line, 14 coil annealing furnaces, six finishing annealing furnaces and external convertors for additional finishing operations, according to the company’s website.

In other company news, Constellium plans to increase its use of recycled aluminum in its European operations, according to an article from Reuters.

 “We’re investing to increase our recycling capacity and we see this as a big opportunity for us in the future,” Chief Executive Jean-Marc Germain told Reuters in an interview that occurred during the London Metal Exchange's LME Week, which is Oct. 27 to Nov. 1 in London.

Reuters reports that the company is examining different scenarios but “is waiting to see if EU emissions policy takes into account the overall benefit of a recycling project along the supply chain, or takes a narrower approach that would force a firm to buy carbon credits to cover a recycling furnace.”

Constellium has begun certifying its sites under the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative, Reuters reports, which Germain said is expected to lead it to change its mix of raw material suppliers.