Novelis, the global leader in aluminum rolling and recycling, today announced the completion of a $48 million investment in its automotive scrap aluminum recycling facility in Oswego, N.Y. It expands upon the company’s recent growth in Oswego to meet the increased demand for aluminum automotive sheet in North America. Including this recycling center, over the past five years, Novelis has invested more than $400 million in Oswego and hired more than 430 new employees, with around 250 additional jobs planned by the year 2020.
The recycling investment includes a new 81,000 square-foot building capable of processing, sorting and storing automotive scrap aluminum. Additional investments were made in infrastructure improvements such as road and parking upgrades to handle increased truck traffic.
“As the leader in automotive closed-loop recycling, one of our top priorities is to create a sustainable supply line between Novelis and automakers, which will preserve the aluminum’s value, reduce greenhouse gases and increase economic efficiencies for our customers,” said Marco Palmieri, Senior Vice President, Novelis and President, Novelis North America. “This investment will help us meet new demands of automakers as they turn towards lightweight aluminum to create more fuel-efficient vehicles.”
The new recycling facility features best-in-class scrap recovery and conversion technology. Designed specifically to meet the needs of North American automakers, the recycling center will enable Novelis to process as much as 10,000 metric tons (20 million lbs) of recycled scrap per month.
The investment by Novelis, whose products are featured in over 180 vehicle models on the road today, signifies an important step toward advancing aluminum’s role as a material of choice among the world’s automakers. Since 2011, Novelis has invested more than $550 million to raise its global automotive sheet capacity to 900,000 metric tons by the end of this year. Novelis predicts that sales of automotive aluminum, which currently represents about 9 percent of its total shipments, may climb to as much as 25 percent of shipments by 2020. To support the growing demand for automotive aluminum, Novelis will allocate approximately 80 percent of the Oswego facility’s capacity to the automotive market.
