One of four new recycling furnaces placed at the Speira plant in Grebenbroich and Toging with €11M investment

A celebratory mood hovers around Speira because it has upgraded its plants in Grebenbroich and Toging by placing the first of the four new recycling furnaces. The new furnace replaced the ageing units with state-of-the-art systems, with a total capacity of 25 tonnes. The objective? Recycling of "low grades" means heavily contaminated scrap and dross produced during the melting process. 

Image source: IndiaMART

With the vision of upgrading the recycling plant with four new furnaces, Speira has invested EUR 11 million (USD 12.68 million), ensuring greater efficiency, H2-readiness and improved occupational safety. With it, Speira has successfully placed the first of the four furnaces in Grebenbroich and Toging, naming it Bernhard. 

The CEO of the German-Norwegian aluminium company, Einar Glomnes, said, "We take a holistic view of our contribution to a functioning circular economy. That's why we don't just look at the pure, easy-to-recycle scraps, but also at the more difficult lower grades and by-products. Wherever aluminium is in it, we want to get the maximum out of it and put it back into the cycle. With this latest, most efficient and environmentally friendly technology, we can now recover even the smallest quantities that were previously lost for recycling"

The investment will be distributed to machines, thermal afterburners, suction hoods, piping and other infrastructures. Technological implications like the state-of-the-art burner and the automatic charging will ensure the furnace has higher productivity output. 

Including the new recycling furnace ensures safety and makes it easier for employees to use. Some benefits that the employees would receive include:

• Effective maintenance is accessible for the individual components
• Tapping into molten metals whilst the furnace door is closed 
• Charging machines minimises wheel loader and forklift tariff in front of the furnaces 

With the new furnaces, the firm's plants can witness a threefold improvement in energy efficiency:

• Thanks to increased throughput, recycling one tonne of aluminium uses up to 95 per cent less energy than producing one tonne of primary aluminium
• Thanks to advanced burner and afterburner technology, the new furnaces achieve maximum energy output from natural gas. At the same time, impurities in low-grade scrap act as fuel during melting, allowing a wider range of scrap grades to be processed efficiently
• Due to the automatic charging process and tapping with closed furnace doors, less heat is lost, indicating the optimised furnace design 

The entire investment decision was outlined in July 2024 and production of the first furnace in Toging will start production from October 2025 and the second one in October 2026. The other furnace in Grevenbroich is scheduled to begin its operations in May 2026.