Rio Tinto incorporates recycled aluminum in Australia

Australia-based aluminum extrusions producer Capral Ltd. has trialed recycled-content billet supplied by Rio Tinto at its Boyne Smelter in Australia.

The trial billets were produced using 50-100 metric tons of Capral’s postproduction aluminum scrap at the firm’s Bremer Park extrusion plant. The scrap was remelted and cast into billets, resulting in a new product with a minimum of 20 percent recycled content.

The company says it is exploring options for incorporating this sustainable material into its product line, noting that its closed-loop approach minimizes waste as well as reduces carbon intensity of extrusions produced from such billets.

“Whilst Capral recycles the vast majority of our scrap, it must be sent offshore for processing and typically ends up in different types of products than what we would normally produce,” Luke Hawkins of Capral says. “We are excited to be working with Rio Tinto, our main domestic supplier, on this project; hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, we can recycle all of our scrap locally and use it to support circularity within the Australian aluminum industry.

“We are driven by the industry to incorporate recycled content into our supply chain. We’ve worked hard to introduce LocAl and LocAl Super Green, our lower carbon aluminum offer, and the addition of this aluminum material with 20 percent recycled content is another important step in our evolving procurement strategy towards delivering more sustainable aluminum to Australian manufacturers.”

Capral says blending postproduction recycled content with virgin material results in a billet that can meet quality standards required by industries such as the construction and transportation sectors. According to the company, this approach demonstrates the viability of closed-loop recycling and challenges traditional notions of production efficiency and resource utilization.

In addition to its Australia trial, Rio Tinto has invested in aluminum recycling in Canada. Last year, it became a 50 percent shareholder in Canada-based recycled-content aluminum producer Matalco and, in 2022, announced a $29 million investment to construct a recycled-content-based furnace in Québec.

Capral is Australasia’s only Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI)-certified extruder and says it is committed to procuring and managing aluminum within its value chain.