“Q1 2024 is anticipated to mirror Q4 2023, with no market peak expected, as the declining demand for aluminium continues to reduce the premium”, Dr Emrah Fahri OZDOGRU, Co-Owner & General Manager, of TRI METALURJI.

Emrah Fahri Ozdogru is co-owner and General Manager of TRI METALURJI. He is a metallurgist, and in 2009, he earned his PhD degree. He has 25 years of experience in the aluminium industry as a variety of Researchers in the Research Institute, Engineer and then as Manager at Casthouse and Extrusion Factory and Rolling Company. He set the TRI in 2016, and now, seven engineers and one technician are working in TRI. He is co-owner of LIME Billet Casthouse with eight team members as well.

TRI is an engineering company and works based on the Project with the following frames: training, technical consultancy, alloy development, material characterization lab-scale and pilot-scale aluminium casting. TRI works 50% with domestic market needs and 50% with the other countries, mainly from Europe.

AL Circle: Do you provide technical or material consultancy to the American aluminium extruders? Can you share your views on the Americas’ current aluminium extrusion market?

Dr Emrah Fahri OZDOGRU: So far, we have limited companies that we have served as technical consultancy based on alloy development for specific applications. However, as TRI METALURJI, we want to grow our business in the USA.

The USA is a vast market and is growing like other countries. The extrusion volume reached around 3 million tonnes, and the market will reach 4 million tonnes of profile by the end of 2030. This data resembles that the demand will increase by around 5% every year. We are following the investment for the new extrusion line. Like the other countries, construction is dominating the market. And automotive comes as a second. TRI METALURJI is focusing on this part of the demand in the USA market. The automotive industry always has high expectations from extruded profiles, such as high mechanical properties, good welding capabilities, etc.

On the other hand, the extrusion companies are expecting high extrudability alloys. By changing the car industry from diesel/benzine to electric, all these points have also been redesigned to cover the demand from the automotive industry. In the near future, extrusion companies are going to compete more to catch the projects from the automotive industry. On those points, we will increase our chances of working with more companies in the US market.

AL Circle: Please brief us on the services you provide in technical consultancy to aluminium billet casting companies.

Dr Emrah Fahri OZDOGRU: TRI is an engineering company. All people are metallurgists and very good at material characterization. Till today, we have worked many billet casthouses with different casting systems which are very well known on the market. Airslip, oil slip, gas Cushing etc. Each casting system has the same solidification approaches but different details, which affect the final quality of the billet. The casting system is the first point. The second point is the alloy. If you know the alloy properties and casting system, you can manage all points in the casthouse. Our consultancy business’s frame starts from the alloy design and then molten metal preparation, refining of the liquid metal, adjustment of casting parameters, casting mould maintenance and final billet quality control. The biggest advantage of our company is that we are doing this job starting from the atom level (alloy designing) and to the final 6-7 meters of billet quality control. We have a high-level characterization laboratory, and We can easily check the microstructure and other related properties of the billets. It provides excellent feedback about the billets. If necessary, we can go back to the first step of the casting process for fine-tuning. Till today, we have developed new alloys (especially for the automotive industry), designed casting moulds, and given training to engineers and technicians. These are our part of the technical consultancy. In order to support the customer, we also set up a pilot scale casting line, and we can simulate the casting process for any grade, such as 6XXX, 3XXX, 2XXX and 7XXX series aluminium alloys. On this line, we can set the casting parameters, homogenization, and cooling parameters for any alloys.

AL Circle: How do you help aluminium extruders detect casting defects? Do you use any special technology for the purpose?

Dr Emrah Fahri OZDOGRU: We have a high-level material characterization laboratory. Metallographic preparation unit, Optic Metal Microscope, Scanning Electron Microscope, automatic Micro-Vickers hardness test system, Differential Scanning Calorimetry with nitrogen cooling system, JMAT-PRO thermodynamic calculations for alloy design. All these are the powerful equipment and High-skill team members. All these are enough to analyze any defect analysis from billet or extruded profiles. We also have a training program for billet casting defect analysis, which means how to approach the defect and method for analyzing. Sometimes, the customers come to our laboratory and do the training in the lab. If necessary, we can also do the same training in the customer plant If they have enough equipment in their lab.

AL Circle: Do you have consultancy partners in the Americas? How do you plan to spread your network in the Americas?

Dr Emrah Fahri OZDOGRU: This is one of our aims. We did not contact any companies for this partnership frame. As I mentioned, we have worked with a few companies in the USA. We have been following the ET conference for the last 15 years and trying to attend and present articles to the people. I think this is the best platform to meet with some potential.

AL Circle: How do you foresee the aluminium extrusion demand in the Americas in 2024?

Dr Emrah Fahri OZDOGRU: This is a prevalent question these days, not only for the USA but also for other parts of the world. My expectation is that the Q1 will be the same as Q4 2023. I am not expecting any peak on the market in Q1 2024. Since the demand for aluminium is still going down and the premium is also decreasing. I don’t think that the premium will start to increase again with some hits like in the pandemic season. My expectation is that the demand and premium will begin to grow again in Q3 2024.

AL Circle: Which industry, according to you, will drive the worldwide aluminium extrusion demand, especially in the Americas?

Dr Emrah Fahri OZDOGRU: I can say that EVs will be the future for extrusion companies. Statistics will never place construction second. But the automotive percentage will increase and try to catch the construction industry.

AL Circle: Does AI drive your technical solutions? How imperative is digitalization in enhancing the aluminium billet casting process?

Dr Emrah Fahri OZDOGRU: Till today, we did not use the AI for any technical solutions. We did some meeting with a software company about how to use microstructure database for making any predictions by using microstructure and decide any casting parameters or make tuning on the process. But never started for this project. However, we are always open for any AI projects for managing our technical approaches.