Hydro opens Michigan aluminum recycling facility

Norway-based Norsk Hydro ASA held a ceremony in mid-November to mark the opening of a new facility in Cassopolis, Michigan, that will be able to produce 120,000 metric tons of recycled-content aluminum ingot annually.

The firm invested about $150 million in the plant and completed it 18 months after breaking ground at the site. Hydro says the plant is allowing it to produce aluminum with the "lowest carbon footprint in North America.”

“With the United States experiencing a manufacturing renaissance, this is a great day for Cassopolis, Michigan and for Hydro,” Hydro President and CEO Hilde Merete Aasheim says.

“This project is a key part of our strategy to double the production of our market-leading recycled products and to bring more low-carbon aluminum to our American partners."

Extrusion ingot produced at the site makes Casspolis the first facility designed to produce Hydro Circal. Cassapolis is, however, the third Hydro greenfield recycling plant the company has built in the United States.

Hydro Circal contains at least 75 percent postconsumer aluminum scrap, certified by Norway-based third-party auditors DNV GL, and has what the company calls a market-leading CO₂ footprint of just 2.3 kilograms of CO₂ equivalent or less per kilogram of aluminum (about 5 pounds of emissions per 2.2 pounds produced).

The Cassopolis plant “will bring more postconsumer aluminum scrap back to life as value-added products in the automotive, transport, building and construction and consumer durables markets,” Hydro says.

“The demand for sustainably produced aluminum has been growing rapidly within virtually all of our market segments and among carmakers in particular, so we see this as a perfect time to introduce Hydro Circal in larger volumes than before—and it is only the beginning,” says Eivind Kallevik of Hydro Aluminium Metal.

In anticipation of the production at Cassopolis, Hydro has been shipping quantities of Hydro Circal to U.S. customers from its plants in Commerce, Texas, and Henderson, Kentucky, for the past year and a half.

While automotive firms will engage in additional testing before ordering Circal from Cassopolis, Aasheim expresses confidence in the facility’s future in the auto sector.

“We have been in business for as long as Michigan has been making cars, and with manufacturers switching to electric vehicles, together with the growing demand for aluminum in other applications, we are excited about bringing our next-generation recycling technology here in Michigan to the U.S.,” she says.