Rochester Aluminum Canada installs new furnace at its Concord facility

Rochester Aluminum Smelting Canada Ltd. has installed a new furnace with a capacity of 100,000 pounds at its facility in Concord, Ontario as it looks to keep pace with a "very competitive" deox market.

Rochester started up the reverberatory sidewell melter Sept. 1, allowing it to idle two 50,000-pound-capacity furnaces at the site, president Jerry Golden told AMM.

Golden said the upgrade comes at an important time for the company, as scrap availability is tight and spreads for finished products are marginal.

"This came about through our concern to have more efficient melting in a very competitive market," Golden said. "This unit is doing the work of two, and is producing more efficiently with better recoveries."

The new furnace maintains the company’s current production rate of around 4 million pounds of deox per month, while operating at around half the cost of the two 50,000-pound-capacity furnaces, he said.

Another advantage of the furnace is that it "creates a better dross", according to Golden. The new furnace’s temperature controls allow the company to recover more aluminum from its dross, which the company sends out for tolling and receives back in the form of aluminum sows.

Golden said that Rochester has complemented the furnace with the addition of "a fully automated scrap-charging, mixing and cleaning piece of equipment," which has lowered labor costs and boosted productivity.