
Photo by Brian Taylor.
France-based aluminum producer Constellium has issued a 98-page 2020 corporate sustainability report that indicates it is now using aluminum scrap as 40 percent of its metallic feedstock globally.
In a section of the report titled “Championing Recycling,” the company points to its Muscle Shoals, Alabama, can sheet plant as its largest melt shop for aluminum scrap worldwide.
According to the firm, the Muscle Shoals plant, which consumes used beverage cans (UBCs), consumed 340,000 metric tons of “post- and pre-consumer scrap” last year.
Other Constellium plants that consume considerable aluminum scrap tonnage are in Neuf-Brisach, France (150,000 metric tons); Valais, Switzerland (30,000 metric tons); Issoire, France (20,000 metric tons); and Děčín, Czech Republic (20,000 metric tons).
“On average, recycled aluminum accounted for over 40 percent of our metal input in 2020,” writes the company. In scrap’s favor, writes Constellium, is that “recycling end-of-life scrap requires only 5 percent of the energy used to produce primary metal, and delivers up to 95 percent in CO2 savings.”
The company adds, however, “The main challenge of aluminum recycling is the availability of scrap. Given the long lifespan of the most dominant aluminum applications in terms of volume (such as buildings and transport vehicles), the available quantity of end-of-life aluminum scrap is limited to what was put on the market many years ago. This, combined with consistent market growth, makes it impossible for recycling alone to feed current demand.”
The entire Constellium 2020 sustainability document can be viewed on this web page.
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