Glencore a partner in aluminum recycling effort

Switzerland-based commodities trading company Glencore reportedly will partner with Kentucky-based Zeb Metals to build an aluminum dross and scrap recycling plant in South Carolina.

A late-February report from Argus Media says backers of the plant are aiming for it to open before the end of this year. According to Argus, the facility will “include as many as two rotary furnaces to recycle aluminum dross and industrial scrap for regional consumption."

Zeb Metals is a buyer and trader of nonferrous scrap with a full-service scrap recycling facility, and is engaged in the shredding, sorting, screening, shearing and torching of scrap metal.

The Argus report notes that South Carolina hosts at least two aluminum production facilities: a Century Aluminum primary smelter in Goose Creek and a secondary facility operated by JW Aluminum in the same city.

If the proposed plant can handle aluminum-heavy mixed nonferrous metals produced by auto shredding facilities, the 2022 Recycling Today list and map of auto shredders in the United States shows seven plants in South Carolina, 12 in neighboring North Carolina and another 14 in neighboring Georgia.

With circular economy and decarbonization mandates and incentives growing globally—especially in Glencore’s home continent of Europe—the company has shown a steady interest in recycling in the past several years.

Since January 2022, Glencore has released a summary of its electronic scrap and copper recycling efforts; entered into an agreement with a Morocco-based firm to produce cobalt from recycled battery material; established what it calls a strategic partnership with Toronto-based Li-Cycle Holdings Corp. to boost its lithium-ion battery recycling efforts; and reached another lithium-ion battery recycling partnership with Singapore-based Ace Green Recycling.