The groundbreaking ceremony last week marked the construction start of an expansion at Hydro’s aluminium recycling plant in Rackwitz in Germany. The expansion will enable production of the innovative HyForge forge stock segment, which will significantly increase the use of post-consumer aluminium to ensure market leading sustainability performance.The Rackwitz expansion is an important contributor to Hydro reaching its target of doubling use of post-consumer aluminium scrap by 2025, from around 250,000 tonnes to over 500,000 tonnes per year, and to increase annual recycling EBITDA by a range of NOK 0.7 to 1.1 billion by 2025. The use of post-consumer scrap significantly reduces the CO2 footprint compared to pre-consumer/process scrap as well as primary aluminium. The new facility is planned to become operational by end of first quarter 2023 with 20 new employees, serving automotive customers with smaller diameter, high quality billets that may be forged directly into high quality automotive components. The plant currently produces around 95,000 tonnes of extrusion ingot per year. With the expansion, Rackwitz plans to produce an additional 25,000 tonnes of HyForge and increase the recycling of post-consumer scrap as a major raw material for new products in the plant. The investment is expected to be around EUR 40 million.Once operational, the new facility will enable Hydro to offer the full forge stock diameter portfolio from large to small, including scrap conversion. Forge stock is an aluminium billet with a smaller diameter than a traditional billet and with higher surface quality.These billets can be forged into safety critical automotive parts, like wheel suspension parts, straight after delivery from our casthouses. This means that the number of processing steps from casthouse to automotive part are greatly reduced – leading to cost efficiency and higher product quality compared to traditional processes.The HyForge volumes will complement the volumes already being produced at Hydro's aluminium plant in Husnes, located in western Norway.With the automotive industry putting emphasis on light weighting and sustainability for several decades, there has been continuous growth in the use of aluminium. This is due to aluminium’s light weight, excellent mechanical properties, corrosion resistance and its processing possibilities. Aluminium plays a significant role in the light weighting of electric and hybrid vehicles, as cars need less electricity, and fewer or smaller batteries to travel the same distances.
The groundbreaking ceremony last week marked the construction start of an expansion at Hydro’s aluminium recycling plant in Rackwitz in Germany. The expansion will enable production of the innovative HyForge forge stock segment, which will significantly increase the use of post-consumer aluminium to ensure market leading sustainability performance.The Rackwitz expansion is an important contributor to Hydro reaching its target of doubling use of post-consumer aluminium scrap by 2025, from around 250,000 tonnes to over 500,000 tonnes per year, and to increase annual recycling EBITDA by a range of NOK 0.7 to 1.1 billion by 2025. The use of post-consumer scrap significantly reduces the CO2 footprint compared to pre-consumer/process scrap as well as primary aluminium. The new facility is planned to become operational by end of first quarter 2023 with 20 new employees, serving automotive customers with smaller diameter, high quality billets that may be forged directly into high quality automotive components. The plant currently produces around 95,000 tonnes of extrusion ingot per year. With the expansion, Rackwitz plans to produce an additional 25,000 tonnes of HyForge and increase the recycling of post-consumer scrap as a major raw material for new products in the plant. The investment is expected to be around EUR 40 million.Once operational, the new facility will enable Hydro to offer the full forge stock diameter portfolio from large to small, including scrap conversion. Forge stock is an aluminium billet with a smaller diameter than a traditional billet and with higher surface quality.These billets can be forged into safety critical automotive parts, like wheel suspension parts, straight after delivery from our casthouses. This means that the number of processing steps from casthouse to automotive part are greatly reduced – leading to cost efficiency and higher product quality compared to traditional processes.The HyForge volumes will complement the volumes already being produced at Hydro's aluminium plant in Husnes, located in western Norway.With the automotive industry putting emphasis on light weighting and sustainability for several decades, there has been continuous growth in the use of aluminium. This is due to aluminium’s light weight, excellent mechanical properties, corrosion resistance and its processing possibilities. Aluminium plays a significant role in the light weighting of electric and hybrid vehicles, as cars need less electricity, and fewer or smaller batteries to travel the same distances.
