Sep 6 2006
Novelis has announced that it will invest US$32 million in the construction of a new casthouse at its Sierre, Switzerland, rolling mill. The facility will house a multi-alloy ingot casting center based on the Company's breakthrough Novelis Fusion(TM) technology for simultaneously casting multiple alloy layers into aluminum ingots. The multi-alloy ingots are rolled into sheet products with previously unattainable product features.
The Sierre casting center is expected to be operational in early 2008 and will enable commercial-scale supply in Europe of a new range of high- performance aluminum sheet products targeted at the automotive industry and other key market sectors.
The new casthouse will have an initial annual capacity of 70,000 metric tons, and will lead to the creation of 30 new jobs at the Sierre plant.
The announcement follows the Company's June 2006 unveiling of the Novelis Fusion technology. This innovative process has been in production since March of this year at the Company's rolling mill in Oswego, New York.
Virtually all of the Company's North American production of multi-alloy or "clad" material for existing products has been converted to the new technology. In addition, the Company is working with dozens of customers worldwide on the development of potential new applications, with a focus on products that combine high strength with high formability or unique surface characteristics.
"The market interest in Novelis Fusion is such that we are announcing this additional capacity," said Martha Brooks, Chief Operating Officer of Novelis. "This investment will increase our ability to deliver superior aluminum sheet products to our European customers. The new product range opens up many opportunities for manufacturers to use customized aluminum sheet solutions, thus in turn enhancing their own products. We are working with a number of European customers on applying the Novelis Fusion technology to meet their needs, using trial ingots supplied from our U.S. facilities."
Arnaud de Weert, President of Novelis Europe, said, "With Novelis Fusion, we can develop sheet solutions that will improve the material's performance in existing applications as well as explore completely new end-uses that were not possible with single-alloy aluminum sheet because of the need to make trade- offs between core properties and surface characteristics.
"The Sierre rolling mill is one of the world's most advanced facilities for the production of aluminum automotive sheet," added de Weert. "The Novelis Fusion capacity will expand our leadership in the supply of high- quality aluminum body sheet to meet the growing demand for light-weighting in the automotive industry."
Today's announcement is in addition to the previously announced installation at Sierre of a fully-automated, high-speed laser cutting system for the production of customer-specific automotive stamping blanks, which will be fully operational in early 2007.
The Company said that it will increase its production of Novelis Fusion products as demand increases. "Plans are already under way to transfer the technology into the Asian market," Brooks said.
Previously, multi-aluminum sheet products were achievable only through a low-tech, high-cost, manual ingot-cladding process and were limited to a small range of alloys. Novelis Fusion technology produces a perfect metallurgical bond between the alloy layers and permits alloy combinations never before possible in aluminum rolling. Novelis has filed patents on the technology in countries worldwide.
http://www.novelis.com/fusion.