“Driving forward grain refinement with efficiency at the heart,” John Courtenay, chairman of MQP

Studying metallurgy at the University of Aston, BSc (Hons), John started at Foseco International, working his way through ONC, HNC and LIM, before being seconded to Foseco Canada for three years to work on an exciting new product for steel continuous casting plants, going onto hold a number of international marketing and technical positions before joining Foseco Japan as general manager of their steel mills division, returning to Foseco International in 1983.

In 1986, he switched from steel to aluminium, starting a long association with aluminium casthouse technology as Director of Technology and Marketing of Foseco Aluminium. After selling this business to Pyrotek, he used his experience to form MQP Limited, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2020.

AL Circle: How do you foresee the global aluminium industry? Which manufacturing industry will be the key demand driver for aluminium?

John Courtenay: According to business intelligence analysts, global aluminium demand will increase by almost 40% by 2030; that’s an additional 33.3 million tonnes in all industrial sectors, with transportation, construction, packaging and the electrical sectors driving demand and accounting for 75% of the total metal required. To meet the demand for aluminium products, we are in negotiations that will potentially generate orders for another 2,000 tonnes of our Optifine grain refiner to be generated over the next few years, which is great news.

AL Circle: What emerging trends in the aluminium industry do you believe will shape the market in 2024 and beyond?

John Courtenay: The recent bear market in equities, coinciding with the global pandemic, ceased in late 2022, with a new bull market forming in October 2024. This resulted in global equities rebounding strongly, gaining 40% until February 2024. Similarly, with economic indicators, inflation rates peaked in October 2022 at 12% and have subsequently returned to near-normal levels, with this trend continuing through 2024. Having followed the same curve but displaced by nine months, interest rates are expected to return to normal levels by the year's end, with the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England expected to start cutting interest rates from June. This scenario presages a return to economic growth for the global economy, which will, in turn, positively impact the aluminium industry in 2024.

A second theme is the industry's commitment to meeting the net zero green target, which has led to significant investment in green technologies. It was interesting to see that at the 2024 Annual TMS conference, the majority of the technical papers presented in the light metals section were focused on ways to reduce carbon emissions.

AL Circle: Could you explain the different variations of Optifine available and their specific applications within the aluminium production process? How does Optifine contribute to preventing defects such as razor streaks, cracks, and other imperfections in aluminium alloys?

John Courtenay: There are three variations of Optifine, 3:1 100, 5:1 100, and 5:1 125, which are used in the production of over five million tonnes of alloys a year at 45 casthouses worldwide. Each product suits particular applications, but they all have one thing in common: They are all high-efficiency and bring addition rates right down to make cost savings for casthouses and improve melt quality.

 

Customers mainly use our 100% relative efficiency Optifine 3:1 100 and 5:1 100 grain refiners for producing foil stock, litho sheet, canbody and can lid stock and other packaging, as well as general purpose applications and production routes. Optifine 5:1 125 has a 125% relative efficiency compared with Optifine 3:1, which in itself is three times more efficient than standard grain refiners on the market. The result of five years of fundamental research into nucleation with BCAST, it means casthouse’s need up to 90% less grain refiner, helping them make cost savings while achieving excellent melt quality, especially in alloys with high tensile strength and high surface quality typically used in automotive applications. It is a premium product which gives the end user a high rate of return.

AL Circle: Can you elaborate on the benefits of using Optifine in various sectors of aluminium production, such as electric vehicles, construction, packaging, etc.?

John Courtenay: In today’s world of automotive and EV, Optifine 5:1 125 brings down harmful particles in the aluminium melt by up to 85%. This supports the production of high-stress components such as battery boxes, where the high strength levels needed lead to the addition of zirconium in the alloy composition, producing a poisoning effect that compromises the performance of standard grain refiners. The extra refining power of Optifine 5:1 125 helps to produce the grain size and integrity needed, all while adding fewer damaging particles.

At the other end of the spectrum, the process of producing aluminium sheets for can body stock is highly demanding due to the aluminium's cleanliness and mechanical properties. Aluminium foil stock comes in different alloys, some of which have high purity for making foil used in food and medical packaging, a key property being its thickness. Grain refiner is typically added to both to prevent cracking, but this increases the particle count, resulting in pinholes, tears and deformities. In can body stock, it can mean the collapse of the can when stacked, and in foil stock, spoiling of the contents. This can all lead to significant production outages due to time lost while equipment is down. By using Optifine, the addition rate is reduced by 85%. As a result, a particle counts of 4,000 would be reduced to just 600, preventing pinholes and tears and improving elongation and shape.

AL Circle: What sets Optifine apart from other grain refiners in terms of performance and efficiency? Can you share any case studies or real-world examples demonstrating Optifine's impact on production processes and product quality?

John Courtenay: In practical casting processes, the use of Optifine grain refiner can drastically reduce the formation of twins caused by dendritic growth, decrease process segregation, cold shut and hot cracking tendencies, improve solidification shrinkage during the process, eliminate or better disperse porosity, and enhance casting density and surface quality, improving the success rate of casting and facilitating subsequent ingot processing.

One customer with great results is Henan Zhongfu Industrial Co Ltd, a major aluminium producer that makes more than 600,000 tonnes of can lid, can body, and foil stock annually. In 2021, Zhongfu trialled the Optifine 5:1 100-grain refiner, testing it in the laboratory against their standard Al-Ti-B rod used in production. The result was that when adding 0.2 kg/t of Optifine rods to a 5182-alloy ingot, the grain refinement effect was better than that achieved by adding 0.8 kg/t or lower dosages of the standard rods.

Optifine was then fully adopted in production usage, resulting in reduced grain refiner consumption overall. During 2022, Optifine was used in the production of over 200,000t of high-quality products, with grain sizes meeting 100% of specifications, resulting in financial savings of over 1 million RMB compared with using a standard grain refiner.

AL Circle: How does Optifine contribute to cost savings and overall operational efficiency for aluminium casthouses?

John Courtenay: Grain refiners are arguably a casthouse’s second biggest expense. By using Optifine instead of a standard grain refiner, customers can save up to three dollars per tonne, which results in savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in a medium-sized plant.

To make aluminium alloy production as efficient as possible, we ensure our customers have quick and easy access to stock. We have warehouses worldwide, including one in Rotterdam to service Europe and one in Kentucky, where there are many aluminium processing plants, to service North America.

Customers can pick up a pallet at short notice if they need to, and if they want to put in a replacement order a few months before they need the product, we will store it for them until they want it delivered, an extra level of certainty that the stock is there.

AL Circle: You mentioned that Optifine is used by 45 major casthouses worldwide. What factors have contributed to its widespread adoption within the industry? Are there any plans for further expansion or innovation in the Optifine product range?

John Courtenay: We started MQP because we wanted to revolutionise the industry through the development of our high-efficiency grain refiners. Grain refiners had often been inconsistent in performance, which resulted in cracking, inconsistent or large grain size, impairment of melt quality, and significant waste. Through intensive innovation, we have changed all this.

As they say, cleanliness is next to Godliness and the cleaner the grain refiner, the fewer particle agglomerates, local defects, and impurities. To this end, we are currently looking at developing a 5:02 grain refiner - widely regarded as the cleanest grain refiner and used for high surface quality applications in sectors including aerospace - that is also super-efficient.

A typical 5:02 product currently offers a maximum of 20% efficiency; we are looking at developing a product that offers the same 85% high efficiency as Optifine 5:1 100. This will provide casthouses with exceptional cleanliness and high efficiency, resulting in lower addition rates for reduced oxidisation and better extrusion. 

We have also overhauled our grain refiner testing system, Opticast, and introduced Opticast 2nd gen to the market. It is now totally automated and extremely robust. Casthouses developing new alloys who need to set new grain refiner addition rates will really benefit from being able to purchase the improved system for themselves, not just have us test for them in our labs. But if we test for them, they can still have accurate data on their grain refiner’s performance within a fortnight. 

AL Circle: In what ways do you see Optifine evolving to meet the changing needs and challenges of the aluminium industry, particularly in terms of sustainability and environmental impact? How does Optifine align with broader industry trends towards greener and more sustainable production practices?

John Courtenay: Aluminium is the top dog when it comes to energy transition towards low-carbon sources, making vehicles lighter and creating electrical infrastructure and solar panels. However, the manufacturing process involves large amounts of energy, and we strive to combat that.

In the past year, we started producing Optifine 5:1 125 with low-carbon, ‘green’ aluminium, meaning it’s manufactured using hydroelectric or wind power, which results in far lower polluting CO2 emissions. We are pleased to announce that in 2023, we rolled out our closed-loop, sustainable manufacturing process for all our Optifine grain refining products.

We also recycle customers’ scrap to make our product. This means we take customers’ production scrap aluminium and melt it down to create our grain refiners, as well as master alloys, which they can buy back. Customers include the mobile communications industry, which is under huge pressure to make all aluminium components from recycled aluminium, including the internal structural frame. We also strongly continue to promote the message that if the world was to adopt Optifine, fluoride by-products and emissions would be cut by two-thirds. The higher relative efficiency means less energy used, less coil changes and transportation around the casthouse and lower warehouse inventory.

AL Circle: In what ways do you foresee the global supply chain dynamics impacting the aluminium market in the coming years? What are the key challenges the aluminium industry faces today, and what strategies are being implemented to address them?

John Courtenay: As we are all too well aware, global supply chain dynamics were severely impacted during the pandemic, lasting until late 2022 before starting to return to normality. This, indeed, was a frightening shock, with container prices to Europe and North America peaking at over $17,000 per container, and that was if it was possible to get one.

But the market has typically corrected since then, with the supply of new containers and competition between logistics providers increasing, resulting in prices dropping back to and even below pre-pandemic levels. That this could happen has caused the business model based on heavy reliance on importing low-cost goods and raw materials from China to be questioned, but, nonetheless, the robust rebound has answered the question.

That was until the latest problems caused by the Houthi rebels, who launched drone and rocket attacks on commercial shipping in the vital shipping lanes of the Red Sea and adjoining Gulf of Aden. So far, we have not experienced any difficulties getting containers, but the use of extended shipping routes via the Cape has led to higher costs and longer supply times. However, these have been effectively countered by establishing extensive global stocking facilities, excellent quality control procedures, and cost reduction due to efficient, low-cost base manufacturing.

How do you anticipate geopolitical factors influencing the aluminium market in the foreseeable future?

John Courtenay: This is a really difficult one, particularly given the unusually volatile state of the world today. The global balance seems to be under threat from a resurgent alliance of autocratic rogue states. However, it must be borne in mind that due to their command-based economic model, their economies are weak and will remain weak with inherent structural problems against which the West, particularly the USA, can be seen to be returning to healthy growth post-pandemic. On balance, my belief is that stability will be restored, that the world will experience renewed economic growth in the next decade and that this will particularly be so for the aluminium market, given its relevance to achieving and sustaining net zero in the years ahead. 

AL Circle: Looking ahead, what are your predictions for the future of the aluminium market, and how is your company preparing to stay ahead in this evolving landscape?

John Courtenay: As per the previous question, I see strong growth in the aluminium market in the next decade, and MQP is well positioned to take advantage of this with our new class-leading product, Optifine 5:1 125, offering 125% relative efficiency, resulting in ultra-low addition rates leading to lower particle counts, lower costs, and improved finished product quality. Together with this, we have a pipeline of new grain refiner products under development to meet future demands for ever cleaner, ever more efficient grain refiners to continuously improve finished product quality and reduce costs.