Hydro unveils major can recycling line at Neuss

Germany – Aluminium giant Hydro has commissioned a Euro 45 million facility at its Neuss plant in Germany with an annual design capacity to recycle up to 50 000 tonnes of used beverage cans, converting them into new can tabs, ends and bodies.

Creating 40 new jobs, the facility ‘is the first to adopt a patented, advanced sorting technology for used beverage cans’ and is ‘able to process collected aluminium material with up to 20% impurities’, observed Hydro’s president and ceo Svein Richard Brandtzæg, who was joined by the company’s executive vice president Kjetil Ebbesberg in officially opening the new line, together with German federal minister Hermann Gröhe and Northrhine-Westphalian economy minister Garrelt Duin.

The sensor sorting and separation technology used at Neuss was tailored for used beverage cans at Hydro’s research and development centre in Bonn. ‘It represents cutting-edge technology in the recycling industry,’ the company insists.

Hydro is aiming to become climate neutral by 2020 and will take the next step towards this goal in June when, following a Euro 15 million revamp, its aluminium remelting plant at Clervaux in Luxembourg will begin recycling used aluminium products into extrusion ingot for building and construction.