Salt Lake City-based Metro Group Inc. has announced it has acquired the assets and location of Allied Metals Inc. of Ogden, Utah.

This is the third company Metro Group has acquired within the past 12 months. In January 2017, Metro acquired North American Recycling of Nampa, Idaho, and in October 2016 the company acquired Arrow Metals Trading Missouri.

Metro Group describes Allied Metals as a full-service ferrous and nonferrous recycling yard with roots dating back to 1947. The company says it will move its existing yard in Ogden to the Allied location in early August 2017 “to allow better access and greater benefits” to its customers.

“Allied has always had a great location on one of the busiest streets in Ogden, so it makes sense for us to combine our assets at that larger facility,” says Mark Bond, president of Metro Group. “We opened our own yard in Ogden four years ago and have seen steady growth ever since. This will allow us to better serve our customers in northern Utah.”

Metro Group Inc. bills itself as a premier metal recycling and transloading company doing business domestically and internationally that has existed since the early 1900s. Originally founded in Logan, Utah, by eastern European immigrants, Metro Group has grown into a multi-million-dollar business with eight facilities in Utah, Nevada and Idaho, along with a trading office in Missouri.

Automakers will continue to increase their use of aluminum in new car and truck construction at a faster pace than any time in history, concludes a study commissioned by the Aluminum Association and its Detroit-based Aluminum Transportation Group (ATG). The trend is likely to bring additional volumes and types of aluminum into scrap processing facilities in the approaching decades.

Total aluminum content is expected to grow from 397 pounds per vehicle (PPV) in 2015 to 565 PPV by 2028, representing 16 percent of total vehicle weight, according to a survey of automakers conducted by Michigan-based market research firm Ducker Worldwide.

“Aluminum remains the fastest growing automotive material over competing materials and is entering its most unprecedented growth phase since we’ve been tracking the shifting mix of automotive materials,” says Abey Abraham of Ducker Worldwide. “To further improve fuel economy, battery range, safety and overall driving performance, automakers no longer default to a single material and instead are pursuing a multi-material design approach where the best material is chosen for the best application. This design evolution is what’s driving aluminum’s increased market penetration in the auto sector.”

Heidi Brock, president and CEO of the Arlington, Virginia-based Aluminum Association, says, “As our automotive customers embrace a multimaterial approach to new car and truck design, that directly translates to increased amounts of aluminum. On top of 40 years of uninterrupted growth, the aluminum industry is experiencing a level of sustained growth not seen before in any market or product sector.”

Adds Brock, “The aluminum industry invested or committed more than $2 billion to ensure increased capacity in the U.S. since 2013, and the industry is prepared to continue such investments in domestic manufacturing jobs as demand continues to grow.”

The study finds that total aluminum content in North American light vehicles will increase to nearly 4.5 million tons (9 billion pounds), averaging 466 PPV by 2020, an increase of 69 pounds from 2015. Aluminum parts will more than double with aluminum hoods expected to reach 71 percent penetration (up from 50 percent currently). About 50 percent of total aluminum content growth from 2015 to 2020 will be driven by closures, crash management systems, steering knuckles and structural vacuum die cast parts. Aluminum vacuum die castings are expected to grow from less than three PPV today to 14 PPV by 2020. The average passenger car will contain 362 pounds of aluminum and the average light truck will contain 523 pounds of aluminum by 2020.

Ducker projects total aluminum content growing to 565 PPV (16 percent of vehicle mass) by 2028 with nearly 25 percent of vehicles having partial aluminum body components. More than 2 million of those vehicles will be pickup trucks and 400,000 will have plug-in hybrid or zero-emissions powertrains.

Since 1996, the ATG has commissioned Ducker Worldwide to conduct periodic surveys of automakers. This year’s “Aluminum Content in North American Light Vehicles 2016 To 2028” study is based on an analysis relying primarily on in-person interviews with automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and their suppliers, as well as data obtained from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Center for Automotive Research.

More details on the study can be found on this web page.

Alton Steel Inc. has reportedly announced its intention to install “bar-in-coil” production capabilities at its plant in Alton, Illinois.

An online news item from Illinois-based Advantage News says the $4.75 million expansion will add the new product offering to the company’s current menu of hot-rolled, cut-to-length SBQ (special bar quality) bars.

The new bar-in-coil products will be sold to Alton’s current customers in the cold-drawn steel bar industry as well as new potential customers who use coiled bar, according to the article.

 “We are excited about this opportunity to expand our operations and thankful to the board for their investment and commitment in Alton Steel Inc. and its employees,” Alton Steel president and CEO James Hrusovsky is quoted as saying. 

Alton Steel operates a scrap-fed electric arc furnace (EAF) with the capacity to produce up to 750,000 tons per year of steel, according to the company’s website.

Two German recycling associations say their member companies are ready should participants at an early August 2017 “Diesel Summit” recommend a system to offer a financial incentive to scrap diesel vehicles.

The BDSV (German Association of German Steel Recycling and Disposal Companies) and the Association of German Metal Dealers (VDM) have issued a joint statement saying, “If one of the results of the Diesel Summit were the introduction of a scrapping premium for older diesel vehicles, the German end-of-life car [sector] would be well prepared for this.”

Continue the two groups, “Such a program of purchase incentives, discussed in the run-up to the Diesel Summit, for the rapid change of older diesel vehicles to exhaust-gas-free or low-emission vehicles could build on a network of nearly 1,200 certified dismantling companies and more than 50 suitable shredding plants.” Adds the BDSV and VDM, “In these plants, old vehicles are disposed of in an environmentally sound manner. The resulting materials are fed as secondary raw materials to the steel and non-metal producers.”

The diesel scrapping premium would, on the one hand, help to reduce air pollution caused by exhaust fumes and, on the other hand, conserve primary raw materials and energy, thus producing a double benefit for the environment, say the groups.

The German trade groups say their member companies “demonstrated their efficiency” when a similar scrapping premium was introduced in early 2009 as an economic stimulus. At that time, some 2.5 million vehicles older than nine years were scrapped, according to the BDSV and VDM. “Almost all disposal orders were processed by the end of 2010 [and] the recycling industry and the authorities had found pragmatic solutions for the handling of scrapped vehicles,” the two groups state.