MetalX to partner on aluminum slab facility

Fort Wayne, Indiana-based scrap metal recycling and trading firm MetalX has announced it will work jointly with Louisville, Kentucky-based Manna Capital Partners to build a recycled-content aluminum rolling slab facility in the Great Lakes region.

MetalX and Manna Capital Partners say they plan to invest more than $200 million into what they call a new greenfield aluminum rolling slab facility to be located in northeast Indiana, northwest Ohio or southern Michigan.

The facility will be designed to produce about 100,000 metric tons per year of what the companies call “ultra-low carbon aluminum rolling slab with a higher percentage of recycled content than is currently available.”

The two companies say the facility’s end markets “will be focused primarily on alloys for the beverage, packaging and auto industries and, to a lesser extent, industrial and specialty markets.” The plant is expected to become fully operational in the first half of 2026 and will employ approximately 100 people.

MetalX says the aluminum plant will be near one of its own scrap processing operations and a dedicated logistics center by Page Trucking to become part of what it calls “a $300 million greenfield recycling campus where innovative closed-loop recycling solutions will support the aluminum industry’s sustainability and circularity goals.”

The planned facility joins several major recycled aluminum melt shop investments announced last year, including one by can producer Ball Corp., another by steelmaker Steel Dynamics Inc. and a third by Atlanta-based Novelis Inc.

MetalX is a privately held metals recycling business founded in 2012 by Danny and Neal Rifkin. The company sold its auto shredding plant and ferrous scrap-oriented assets to steel producer BlueScope in 2021. Last year it acquired a secondary aluminum production site in Indiana.

Manna Capital Partners is a private investment firm founded by Junior Bridgeman and Kevin Attkisson. Last year, the company’s name was attached to the Ball Corp. announcement indicating that firm intended to build a recycled-content aluminum can sheet rolling mill and melt shop in Los Lunas, New Mexico.