Speira hosts German legislator at recycling facility

Germany-based Speira recently hosted Daniel Rinkert, a member of the German parliament (Bundestag) and its deputy spokesperson for climate and environment, at its under construction recycled-content Rheinwerk aluminum production plant in Neuss.

A primary aluminum smelter used to be located at the site, but now Speira is investing 40 million euros ($46.9 million) there to convert production from a linear to a circular business model.

At a part of the complex visited by Rinkert, Speira says where primary aluminum was once smelted “using enormous amounts of energy,” now used beverage cans are being stored for the future production of recycled-content aluminum.

“Speira has moved away from energy-intensive primary production,” says Volker Backs, managing director of the company. “This decision was inevitable in light of Germany's energy policy outlook and our responsibility for the future viability of our entire company.”

Backs says the investments also tie into Speira’s “transformation into a pure recycling group, a path we began over 20 years ago” and that he says has been accelerated once again.

“Speira is demonstrating how the transformation can succeed with new economic impetus," Rinkert says. "The Social Democratic Party’s task is to support companies in this process. Reliability and predictability are crucial here. We will therefore continue to speed up the planning and approval processes and ensure that there are no price jumps in emissions trading that could stifle the transformation.”

Speira says the 40 million euros it is investing is going toward additional recycled-content melt shop capacity at Rheinwerk, with the aim of achieving total CO₂ savings of up to 1.5 million metric tons per year.

A new melting furnace exclusively for scrap was delivered in the summer and now is being installed. The furnace is scheduled to start up in early 2026.

“At the same time, the third of four existing casting plants is being converted and optimized for recycled alloys,” the metals company says, calling that step another way Rheinwerk is further reducing its carbon footprint.

A new scrap storage facility is already complete, in anticipation of the furnaces needing to be fed, says Speira. The new storage areas cover one-third of the decommissioned smelter’s floor space and will be supplemented by facilities for sampling incoming scrap.

“The long halls allowed us to think and plan big,” says Boris Kurth of Speira. “This huge new scrap storage facility creates space for more input for all our recycling furnaces, not just the new one. We need the sampling for scrap that has already gone through one life cycle. These pos-consumer scraps are a source that we want to utilize much more.”

The new recycling furnace will melt aluminum alloys that will be further processed into beverage cans after rolling steps.

Speira calls beverage cans a fast-moving product with a life cycle from production to filling, retail sale, consumption by the end user, disposal and recycling that lasts only around 60 days.

“This means that the same aluminum cans pass through Speira’s recycling facilities many times a year, allowing the ecological advantages of state-of-the-art technology to be exploited particularly frequently and efficiently,” the company says.

Speira says it is working in cooperation with the Brussels-based European Aluminium association and with other manufacturers to research recycling-friendly alloys and promote deposit, return and collection systems for the light metal.