HINDALCO PLANS TO BUILD AN ALUMINUM RECYCLING PLANT IN THE US. ON WHICH IT WILL SPEND US$ 2.5 BILLION

Birla’s multinational Hindalco Industries is studying the construction of a new low-carbon aluminum rolling and recycling plant in the U.S. for which it has planned an initial investment of around US$2.5 billion. This is the Birla Group’s largest greenfield project with which the company intends to meet the demand for beverage can films and the automotive market.

The facility, which will be built in Alabama and is expected to be operational by mid-2025, will initially have a production capacity of close to 600,000 tons of finished products per year.

In this regard, more than half of the capacity will be used to meet the growing demand for aluminum beverage can sheet in North America as consumers seek more sustainable packaging. The new facility will significantly increase Novelis’ recycling capacity to 90 billion cans worldwide from the current 74 billion.

Steve Fisher, CEO of Novelis, notes that “it’s really due to the resurgence of beverage cans as the most sustainable solution from a packaging standpoint. You’re seeing it in our customers who increasingly prefer infinitely recyclable aluminum.”

Demand for cans in North America has been holding steady between 2010 and 2018, but according to Fisher, investments in can manufacturing have added about $4 billion since then as consumers have increasingly abandoned plastic for more sustainable packaging. That’s enough to produce about 38 billion new cans a year amid a rapidly growing shortage that has forced companies to ship cans by air from Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Asia.

This will be the largest global expansion project of billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla’s Aditya Birla group and will bring the group’s total investment in the U.S. across all businesses to more than $14 billion. The Mumbai-based company has been on a wave of expansion driven by strong demand prospects and higher metal prices.

Hindalco, announced last March that it will spend up to US$7.2 billion to expand its aluminum business over the next five years, mainly in India and North America. Earlier this year, Novelis had announced a $365 million investment to build a recycling plant in Kentucky.