"The next core step is the in-house heat treatment, carried out according to Alimex's parameters in their largest European furnace", José Ceballos Tejero, Director Purchasing, Metal Management and Research & Development, Alimex GmbH

AL Circle: Can you briefly overview Alimex GmbH and its core business activities?

José Ceballos Tejero: Alimex is one of the world's best-known suppliers of high-precision aluminium solutions. As a reliable partner, Alimex helps its customers achieve a competitive advantage in wide-ranging industrial applications. As a medium-sized family business, Alimex is the inventor as well as one of the leading companies regarding quality and innovation in the field of aluminium cast plates. The production process itself was initially invented by Alimex over 50 years ago.

AL Circle: How does Alimex, the cast-plate inventor, produce aluminium cast plates surpassing the highest market standards?

José Ceballos Tejero: A key factor in our aspiration to exceed the market standards is the carefully selected portfolio of highly reliable suppliers we are working with.

Our casting process is state of the art, always using the newest casting technologies. Suppliers cast our product based on Alimex's specifications, which only some cast houses can meet. The next core step is the in-house heat treatment, carried out according to Alimex's parameters in their largest European furnace, providing a capacity of approximately 600 mt per run. Our parameters are based on our knowledge from 50 years of experience. This guarantees the optimal enhancement of the material's mechanical properties, as well as a high-level stress relief in preparation for the subsequent production steps.

AL Circle: What are the key factors that contribute to the success and growth of Alimex GmbH?

José Ceballos Tejero: Alimex is an innovative company which has already been developing special qualities for individual fields of application, all whilst continuously working on projects to meet our customers’ requirements regarding new applications and quality. The best-selling and most well-known product, which is also to be considered one of the market-leading brands, is our ACP 5080 material (based on EN-AW 5083 and AA 5083). Beyond offering this material, we have also developed special qualities with additional properties, which are based on our customers’ requirements depending on the final application area.

AL Circle: What are the key challenges the aluminium industry faces when it comes to heat treatment processes? How does Alimex address these challenges and provide innovative solutions for heat treatment in the aluminium industry?

José Ceballos Tejero: In 2016, Alimex decided to invest in their heat treatment furnace, which was customized to meet Alimex’s needs. The furnace itself, as well as its design and the process control features have been specifically predefined by Alimex, to ensure that we achieve the required quality, whilst reducing fossil fuel consumption by almost 40% and herewith accomplishing a reduction of CO₂ emissions from the furnace.

AL Circle: Can you discuss any recent technological advancements or breakthroughs that Alimex has introduced in the field of aluminium heat treatment?

José Ceballos Tejero: As you can understand, this type of information is strictly confidential and based on our internal know-how. But we can say that our heat-treatment process is one of our core tools to control and influence the most important parameters for our customers in preparation for their subsequent processes. Following the machining of parts or components, some customers need an additional heat treatment step afterwards due to the possible occurrence of stress during the machining process. Meanwhile, most of our customers using ACP 5080 material don´t need this additional heat treatment step.

AL Circle: How does Alimex GmbH ensure high-quality product and service standards?

José Ceballos Tejero: Alimex has defined various parameters in consultation with its suppliers and can control and provide a consistently high in-house quality regarding all products. Apart from this, we have regular special technical meetings in order for us to improve our products as much as possible. We are delighted to have this highly valuable know-how internally and in the form of our suppliers, with whose help we always strive to develop higher qualities. This enables us to embody the benchmark for our niche product compared to competitors.

AL Circle: Alimex GmbH is known for its commitment to sustainability. Could you please explain some of the sustainable practices implemented by the company?

José Ceballos Tejero: Starting with the biggest advantage of our core material, aluminium, we proudly declare that we are recycling 100% of our scrap from production via our suppliers to convert it back into raw material. This is only part of the effort we put into reducing the overall process-related scrap as much as possible.

Furthermore, we started to redirect the heat generated by our production processes to use it to heat our production side more than a decade ago. All the machines are regularly updated from a technical point of view to optimise the required power consumption. Our forklifts are almost 100% electric. The power we need is based on contracts geared towards renewable energy sources and, shortly, on our new photovoltaic system with a capacity of 1500 kWp. Said system will allow us to work self-sufficiently during certain times of the day. These are just a few more than 20 different projects we have or are currently carrying out. We are always looking for additional opportunities along our process chain to improve our environmental efforts and become more and more sustainable in the future.

AL Circle: Alimex GmbH operates on a global scale. How does the company manage international operations and maintain strong relationships with customers and partners worldwide?

José Ceballos Tejero: Alimex is interested in a long-term relationship with all of its global customers. To optimize the supply chain and enhance our global service and product availability, we decided to open up new facilities in the US and Malaysia in addition to our production site in Willich. This strategic decision was meant to bring us closer to our customers and, in particular, strengthen our access and service level in the American and Asian markets.

Our flexibility allows us to deliver our product to any of our customers worldwide within a short time.