Continuum: The new benchmark for green aluminium billets

Images obtained via official press release

CMR NLM Eco Aluminium’s Continuum™ combines advanced recycling, process control and high post-consumer recycled content to deliver a new generation of high-performance aluminium billets for extrusion applications.

Aluminium is central to the transition towards a more electrified and resource-efficient economy. Its low weight, durability and recyclability make it increasingly important across automotive, electric mobility, renewable energy, construction and industrial applications.

As demand for aluminium continues to grow, recycling is becoming an increasingly important source of material for new applications. Advances in scrap recovery, sorting, alloy management and billet manufacturing are enabling higher levels of post-consumer aluminium to be incorporated into products while maintaining the consistency required downstream. For extrusion billets, this requires careful control of feedstock chemistry and processing to achieve the required balance of recycled content, quality and performance.

Continuum™, developed by CMR NLM Eco Aluminium Private Limited, addresses this opportunity through a high-recycled-content, ultra-low-carbon aluminium billet designed for extrusion applications. It contains more than 98% post-consumer recycled aluminium and has a verified footprint of less than 1.5 tCO₂e per tonne of aluminium.

The product is manufactured at India's first dedicated facility for producing high-recycled-content aluminium billets for extrusion applications, marking a significant step in the evolution of India's recycled aluminium industry.

Making recycled aluminium more predictable

A fundamental challenge in producing high-quality recycled wrought aluminium is variability in feedstock.

Post-consumer aluminium comes from products with different alloy compositions, manufacturing histories and degrees of contamination. Elements that are beneficial in one alloy can become unwanted residuals in another. As the proportion of recovered material increases, managing this chemistry becomes increasingly important.

Continuum™ begins with advanced feedstock preparation using latest available technologies for aluminium scrap sorting. This enables more effective identification and separation of aluminium-bearing materials before they enter the melting process. The objective is not simply to recover more metal, but to create a more consistent feedstock from which the required alloy chemistry can be produced.

This is followed by controlled melting, alloy adjustment, filtration, degassing and casting. Continuum™ uses Wagstaff® AirSlip® casting technology, supporting controlled solidification and consistent billet quality. Controlled homogenisation subsequently optimises the billet microstructure and the morphology of iron-bearing intermetallic phases, which can influence extrusion behaviour.

Together, these controls are designed to translate a variable recycled input into a high quality, consistent billet for demanding downstream processing.

Performance remains the starting point

The technical objective behind Continuum™ is to integrate a high proportion of recovered material into a tightly controlled manufacturing process, while achieving the consistency and performance required for demanding extrusion applications.

The billet is engineered around the parameters that matter to downstream processors, including extrusion behaviour, surface finish, recovery and process consistency.

Across the aluminium industry, advances in sorting, alloy management, casting and process control are making it increasingly possible to incorporate more recovered material into applications where consistent metallurgical performance is required.

Making environmental performance measurable

The environmental advantage of recycling aluminium is well established, with recycled production requiring substantially less energy than primary aluminium. As the industry places greater emphasis on transparency and traceability, independently verified product-level information is becoming increasingly valuable.

Continuum™ combines 98.05% post-consumer recycled aluminium with a verified footprint of less than 1.5 tCO₂e per tonne of aluminium and a registered Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), EPD-IES-0028287:001.

The EPD provides independently verified environmental information within its defined scope, giving downstream manufacturers a robust basis for carbon accounting, sustainability reporting and material selection.

This is particularly relevant as regulations such as the European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism bring greater attention to the embedded emissions associated with traded materials.

From recycled metal to circular manufacturing

High-recycled-content billet also highlights the importance of the wider aluminium recycling ecosystem.

Achieving genuine circularity requires more than melting scrap. It requires effective collection, identification, sorting, alloy management and manufacturing processes capable of returning recovered metal to demanding applications.

In practice, the future aluminium value chain can increasingly be described as:

post-consumer product → recovery → sorting → recycled metal → billet → extruded product → recovery again.

Each successful cycle retains material value within the economy while reducing dependence on primary resources.

For CMR NLM Eco Aluminium, Continuum™ brings together CMR Green Technologies' recycling capabilities with specialised billet manufacturing expertise through its joint venture with Nippon Light Metal Company Ltd., Japan.

“The future of aluminium is not only low-carbon; it is circular,” says Raghav Agarwal, MD, CMR NLM Eco Aluminium Pvt. Ltd. “Continuum is our effort to bring these two priorities together in a material that can meet the performance expectations of demanding applications.”

As aluminium demand continues to rise, the industry will need to improve both the efficiency of primary production and the recovery of metal already in circulation. For billet producers, the next frontier is to transform increasingly complex post-consumer feedstock into consistent, high-performance material for demanding applications.

Continuum™ is built for this next stage of aluminium—bringing together high recycled content, advanced processing and verified environmental performance to demonstrate that circularity and performance can be designed into the same material.

Note: This article has been issued by CMR NLM Eco Aluminium and has been published by AL Circle with its original information without any modifications or edits to the core subject/data.