Novelis investment response to ‘escalating’ demand

Global – Novelis is investing US$ 205 million (Euro 150 million) to further expand manufacturing operations in the USA and Germany, bringing the aluminium recycling giant’€™s global automotive investments to US$ 550 million (Euro 403 million) in the last two years. All this is needed to ‘keep serving the rapidly-growing automotive market’, the company reports.

Novelis will plough US$ 120 million (Euro 88 million) into the installation of a third aluminium automotive sheet finishing line at its US plant in Oswego in the state of New York. In addition, it will expand its recycling operations for automotive scrap while also making other system and facility upgrades.

This new investment will result in 90 new jobs at the plant and will increase the company’s North American automotive sheet capacity to more than 400 000 tonnes in two years, the company notes.

Another US$ 85 million (Euro 63 million) will cover the installation of a new aluminium automotive sheet finishing line at Nachterstedt in Germany. This expansion will create up to 120 new jobs at the plant and ‘increase the company’s aluminium automotive sheet capacity in Europe to almost 350 000 tonnes’.

The expansion will also enhance the development of the automotive closed-loop model between the company’s recycling operations at Latchford in the UK and what will be ‘the world’s largest’ aluminium recycling centre – a US$ 250 million (Euro 183 million) project at Nachterstedt which is expected to be commissioned in late 2014.

These latest expansions are in response to what Novelis calls ‘escalating global demand’ from automakers for aluminium sheet, production of which the company expects to grow by more than 30% per year through to the end of the decade.

For more information, visit www.novelis.com