The UK’s largest buyer of used aluminum cans, Novelis, has highlighted the improvements it has made to its can recycling facility in Warrington in recent years in order to boost performance.
The facility at Latchford Locks was built in 1991 and Novelis, which operates in 11 countries across the world, says it has the capacity to process every aluminum beverage can sold in the UK, the equivalent to around 117,000 tonnes a year.
Part of the melting process at the plant
Novelis takes in material from local authorities and commercial outlets in the UK and imports some tonnages from Nordic countries. These are processed at Warrington where they are shredded, decoated and melted into an ingot which is transported to Germany by road and train. In Germany the ingot is used for rolling into a sheet for can-makers.
Investment
In 2013 Novelis invested £1.7 million into the facility as part of an upgrade programme.
Then in 2016, Latchford Locks underwent repairs and maintenance work after an aluminium ingot was dropped, causing considerable damage. A separate incident later that year also saw the production process disrupted by an equipment failure which saw supplies of used aluminium cans to the plant halted (see letsrecycle.com story).
The cans are shredded, decoated, melted and then casted ready to be recycled
Quality
Speaking at the Cheshire facility at the end of June, Andy Doran senior manager of sustainability and recycling development at Novelis Europe, emphasised the closed loop nature of the process and spoke about the quality challenges the company faced.
Commenting on the contamination levels of used cans coming into the plant, Mr Doran explained that this is generally around the 10% mark. “The process at the facility is a system which is running consistently at more than a 90% recycling rate, and the challenges around that are ensuring the quality of material coming in doesn’t compromise these levels. The alloy input also need to be right, and you may need to re-alloy sometimes.”
Markets
Novelis has been reporting a major uptake in new markets across the continent for aluminium, as producers look for alternatives to plastic for beverages.
This includes beverages ranging from water to wine, which is now one of the fastest growing aluminium markets for the company in Europe.
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Source: letsrecycle.com Metal
