Cunext plans secondary copper facility in Spain

Spain-based metals producer Cunext Group has announced plans to build a new plant in Córdoba, Spain, that will be designed to make 100,000 tons per year of recycled-content copper cathode.

The company, a supplier of copper and aluminum used predominantly for the transmission of electrical energy, data and signals, made its announcement at Córdoba City Hall in a ceremony featuring Mayor José María Bellido and Cunext CEO Damaso Quintana.

Constructing the facility will involve an investment of nearly $130 million, according to Cunext. The company says the project also “will place the Córdoba capital at the forefront in our country in the manufacture of low-carbon copper products, key for strategic industrial sectors such as automotive, especially in the manufacture of electric cars; the transport industry or the electricity industry, both in conventional forms of energy and renewable energy.”

The new plant will be located on a 76-acre plot of land about 2.5 miles from an existing Cunext facility. It will manufacture Grade A copper cathodes from recovered materials, thus replacing a large part of the primary copper from mining that currently is used as raw material for the manufacture of wire rod (intermediate product used in the manufacture of copper products).

To manufacture its recycled-content copper rod, a new electrolysis process will be developed and implemented capable of producing initially 100,000 tons per year of grade A cathode (with a copper content of 99.99 percent) from copper anodes made from recycled materials.

Quintana says with the new plant the company aims to boost the energy transition by manufacturing products with the "highest quality standards and with the smallest carbon footprint in the market" and to meet the growing demand for sustainable products in sectors with special needs such as the automotive industry for the manufacture of electric cars, or renewable energies.

"Copper has an infinite life span and, once extracted from the mine, it can be recycled over and over again without losing any of its properties," Quintana adds.

The also is making a series of investments to expand the copper refining section of its existing Córdoba facility, with those upgrades coming online later this year.

The anodes made via the upgraded process will be the raw material used to feed the electrolysis process of the new factory, which will complete the growth process that makes the Cunext Group a Spanish leader, and one of the main in Europe, in the manufacture of green copper, the company says.

The Cunext Group also has a presence in other cities in Spain as well as in Italy and the United States. In the U.S., the company’s technology is a key part of the Ames Copper operation in North Carolina, one of North America’s newest copper scrap consuming facilities.