Hydro invests in Deeside aluminium remelting plant to increase recycling production

The global aluminium giant Norsk Hydro’s investment scales up Hydro Aluminium Deeside’s situation in the UK extrusion ingot domestic market delivering consumers with higher recycled aluminium from Q1 2023.

Trond Olaf Christophersen, the head of Recycling in Hydro Aluminium Metal: "With this investment Hydro Deeside will be able to process and recycle more complex types of post-consumer aluminium.”

The Deeside aluminium facility will recycle additional 7,000 tonnes of aluminium per year which will be mainly sourced from the local scrap market in the region. However, once processed, the recycled aluminium will be delivered to customers as Hydro CIRCAL, a Hydro brand of recycled aluminium made with a minimum of 75% recycled, post-consumer aluminium scrap.

The post-consumer aluminium scrap volume processed in Hydro Deeside has been restricted by melting furnace capacity, while the investment will augment the melting capacity for shredded aluminium scrap, unfasten the operational bottleneck, lower raw material costs and increase the volume of post-consumer scrap recycled at the facility. Furthermore, the technical enhancement to the aluminium melting furnace at Deeside will result in significantly reduced energy consumption.

Wayne Clifton, the Plant Manager of Hydro said: “We will now be able to recycle more post-consumer aluminium scrap from our local market, reducing the reliance on import scrap. The project fits well with Hydro's overall profitability and sustainability ambitions, with reduced energy consumption. We look forward to delivering, even more, value-added, low-carbon products to our customers.”