Alcoa Technical Center in Upper Burrell is shifting its strategy

Alcoa Inc.'s battle to get more aluminum into automobiles might be won with a technology developed years ago for soda cans.

It's the kind of win that would fit CEO Klaus Kleinfeld's emphasis on more profitable products and being a partner rather than just a supplier to manufacturers. While aluminum prices remain near historical lows and significant profits remain elusive, higher-value products hold more promise, he says.

Sherri McCleary, a research scientist at the Alcoa Technical Center in Upper Burrell, said “Alcoa 951,” a pre-treatment coating that makes aluminum stick to other materials, was never widely used for the reason it was created.

But a payoff may be at hand as automakers gear up to meet the federal government's 54.5 mpg target by 2025, which is driving use of lighter weight materials in vehicles.

Alcoa 951 is “great example,” McCleary said, of the thinking going on at the 600-employee tech center, which is undergoing a “cultural turnaround” aimed at improving its intellectual and financial output.

Chief Technology Officer Ray Kilmer has put in place a strategy for the center's scientists to work more closely with customers inside and outside of Alcoa, the nation's largest and the world's third-largest aluminum company.

Its goal is to improve morale, and for the first time make the tech center financially independent, helping to justify the company's investment in long-term research that can take years to pay off.

“An adhesive was one of the solutions discussed” to the years-old problem of bonding aluminum to other materials, she said. “We went back and looked at what we had in our portfolio.”

They found Alcoa 951 — the “fundamental technology we were looking for.” Originally developed for beverage cans, it was never widely used. The question then became, “how do we refine it for a much more structural application?”

That's more urgent now, as automakers start to use lighter-weight materials to meet the coming fuel standard. Automakers “need to take costs out, and glued and screwed technology that uses Alcoa 951 is more amenable to a high-volume cost structure” where millions of vehicles are produced, Kilmer said.

That is spurring more competition between aluminum and steel for a bigger share of vehicle curb weight.

Analysts say Alcoa has remained barely profitable since Kleinfeld took over as CEO in May 2008, and needs high-margin products used in cars and airplanes to reduce its dependence on commodity aluminum.

Kilmer said Alcoa chose to license the 951 technology so all car companies can move to aluminum, rather choosing between competing products including carbon composites and light-weight steels. “Dealing with multiple products would have been a headache” for them, he said. “To be honest, it wouldn't have been adopted by the car companies if we didn't license it.”

That will bring tens of millions of dollars in royalties to the tech center, Kilmer said.

A survey of automakers by Ducker Worldwide Inc. of Troy, Mich., forecasts the use of aluminum per vehicle will rise from 327 pounds in 2009 to 550 pounds in 2025.

“We're at the very beginning of a major shift in material for automotive, from steel cars to aluminum cars,” said O'Carroll. “The Ford F-150 will be the first large production vehicle to shift from steel to aluminum, and Alcoa will be supplying sheet along with Novelis. Ford wants two suppliers.” Alcoa from its plant in Davenport, Iowa, and Novelis Inc. from a plant in Oswego, N.Y.

Ducker is projecting that automotive body sheet made from aluminum will increase from 150 million pounds in 2012 to 5 billion pounds by 2025 because of the new fuel standards, O'Carroll said.