British recycler sues Aleris in payment dispute

British aluminum recycler Alutrade is suing Aleris International for allegedly failing to pay for more than 2.3 million lbs of used beverage containers (UBCs), bottle tops and whole cans early last year, according to documents filed on April 15 in a US District Court in Ohio.

Alutrade is seeking damages of more than $725,000.

An Aleris spokesman declined to comment, stating that the company does not address pending litigation.

Alutrade claims that Beachwood, Ohio-based Aleris initially refused pre-payment of four invoices for orders filed from February to March 2013 that totalled nearly $569,000. Instead, Aleris allegedly accepted the product and did not notify Alutrade that the material was "non-conforming" until October. Aleris then allegedly notified the British recycler that it "would not pay for the product it received" and "never gave [Alutrade] the opportunity to cure any of the alleged non-conformities, or to pick up the non-conforming product and replace it".

Alutrade also claims Aleris "substantially changed the condition of the product by incorporating it into its production process [...] prior to informing of the alleged non-conformity of the product".

Alutrade "supplies can products to other large publicly and privately held companies in the United States and throughout the world" and has heard of "no substantive complaints related to the can product it produced from December 2012 to October 2013", according to the filing.