New aluminum scrap grade debuts at ReMA 2025

Panelists during the Spotlight on Aluminum session at the Recycled Materials Association (ReMA) Conference & Exposition this May in San Diego discussed the developing market for vesper, a new recycled aluminum grade that ReMA’s Nonferrous Division approved and ReMA’s board of directors will vote on in July. The grade was developed in partnership with Novelis Inc., an aluminum recycling and rolling company headquartered in Atlanta.

Vesper is comprised of wrought aluminum sheet, extrusion and/or plate grades segregated from the zorba or twitch shredded aluminum grades. It must not contain more than 1 percent free magnesium, 1 percent free zinc, 0.5 percent analytical iron and 1 percent nonmetallics.

"Not all twitch is created equal. Sorting out that cast is difficult. This is new to everyone, and everyone needs a good dose of patience.” – Neil Byce, owner, CW Metals

The new grade will be important in meeting growing demand for recycled aluminum, with session moderator Gabriella Vagnini, managing editor of Aluminum Market Update with CRU Group, saying more than $10 billion in secondary aluminum production investments have been announced. She added that recycled metal consumption will need to increase by 40 percent to meet expected demand for aluminum semifinished products by 2029.

Gary Gallo, senior manager, end-of-life recycling, at Novelis, said that by 2030, implied wrought alloy content in twitch will rise significantly as more aluminum-intensive vehicles reach end of life. “Mixed aluminum makes it challenging for consumers like Novelis … to use that in the most fully circularized and optimized way. And what it points to is the need for segregation,” he continued. “And this is a path that Novelis started on about five years ago in earnest.”

Twitch is recycled into secondary cast alloys, he said. “Once you take a hood from an F-150, and you shred it and you send it away to make, say, A380 [aluminum alloy] out of it, we can never get that scrap back,” Gallo continued. “The silicon content goes through the roof.”

Neil Byce, the owner of CW Metals and vice chair of ReMA, said that, of the numerous ReMA specs, “vesper is the newest one, and it is probably the most interesting that we’ve done because it’s so cutting edge. And what else is interesting is that it’s one of the first moments that marks this true collaboration between folks like Ford and Novelis and recyclers all coming together to try to create something that is workable. And we even included those that are manufacturing the equipment … to ensure that what it is that we are specifying they can create.”

As recyclers begin to prepare material to the vesper specification once it is approved by the ReMA board later this summer, Byce said patience will be needed because further sorting twitch presents unique challenges. “Not all twitch is created equal. Sorting out that cast is difficult. This is new to everyone, and everyone needs a good dose of patience.”