Metal Exchange Corp. reorganizes secondary aluminum casting capacity

Metal Exchange Corp. (MEC), with headquarters in St. Louis, says it is reorganizing its secondary aluminum casting capacity and rebranding its secondary cast product lines at its Pennex Aluminum Co. LLC sites in Wellsville and Greenville, Pennsylvania, and its Continental Aluminum site in New Hudson, Michigan, as MEC Cast Products. In a news release about the change, MEC says it will provide “better strategic focus and organizational alignment.”

The Wellsville plant is a shared facility that will produce extrusions under the Pennex brand and billet under MEC Cast Products, Mark Buchner, president of MEC Cast Products, tells Recycling Today. The company’s aluminum extrusion plants in York, Pennsylvania, and Leetonia, Ohio, will continue to carry the Pennex Aluminum name.

“Our cast products businesses have grown substantially over the years and have a very strong customer focus,” Rick Merluzzi, chief executive officer of MEC says. “By establishing MEC Cast Products, it further strengthens the strategic focus of our business.”

Buchner adds, “We’ve had the chance to evaluate all markets and are excited about the opportunities that are before us. Between the three plants, we have strong operating capacities and capabilities. Our plan is to shift our focus primarily on the billet market segment as it strongly aligns with our company’s expertise, capacity and capabilities.” 

As part of this shift, MEC Cast Products will phase out production of aluminum alloys used for diecasting and deoxidizers in the steel industry at its New Hudson site. Production at that site will be adjusted to meet the company’s internal needs as it realigns resources to the aluminum billet segment. 

He says, “We are successfully finalizing and fulfilling all contracts with existing customers to ensure their needs were met in a timely fashion.”

Casting equipment at the company’s Wellsville plant includes a 130,000-pound regenerative melt furnace, while its Greenville plant has two melt furnaces with one holding furnace, according to the Pennex website.

The newly renamed casting division is ISO 9001:2015 certified and uses common alloy type material to produce 7-, 8-, 9-, 10-, 12- and 14-inch diameter billet in 1xxx, 2xxx and 6xxx series aluminum alloys.

According to the Continental Aluminum website, the company’s reverb and rotary furnaces allow it to use a range of scrap that includes aluminum turnings, old sheet, shredded aluminum, aluminum radiators, cast aluminum, automobile wheels, extrusions, mixed low copper clips and mixed, painted siding, aluminum dross and twitch. Buchner says the New Hudson site will consume more wrought aluminum scrap than cast aluminum scrap as a result of the change in production, but the total volume of scrap consumed will not change.

MEC’s other affiliated companies are MEC Trading and Electro Cycle Inc.