Rewriting the scrap book

When Norsk Hydro bought a struggling Welsh aluminium remelt plant, it took on quite a task. Thomas Grose reports on an operation that has been turned around.

Recycling aluminium is generally a good proposition. The metal can be used over and over again without losing its properties, and the recycling process requires only 5% of the energy needed to make virgin aluminium. But scrap aluminium doesn't travel well. For that reason, Norsk Hydro seeks to have a remelt operation in each of its major markets. Sometimes it builds from scratch ­ that¹s the path it chose in Spain, for instance. But in the UK it passed up on the greenfield option, in favour of taking over a going concern in North Wales, with its existing customers, expertise, organisation ­ and problems.

So did Hydro get it right? Two years down the line the answer is positive, if still slightly provisional. Hydro Aluminium Deeside, as it is now called, has a bright future ­ symbolised by an Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) permit, marking it out as Europe's first non-ferrous metals plant to meet the stricter emission standards for this new EU requirement. "We've done a major clean-up," says managing director Trond Gjellesvik. "We've rehabilitated a run-down plant."

Alison Soper, the Environment Agency's site inspector, agrees that "there has clearly been an improvement", which was certainly sorely needed. The Deeside plant, originally built in 1985 with Welsh Development Agency and venture capital funds, had been fined £20,000 in 1996 for exceeding emission limits. It was in financial trouble too, running at a loss, and had already passed through the hands of two previous owners into those of a Russian oil and metals group.

Hydro invested £4.1 million in rehabilitation. It scrubbed and repainted the plant, installed technically advanced equipment ­ including furnaces with enhanced fume extraction systems ­ and made ongoing housekeeping and control of emissions a priority. Since it needed to renovate the plant completely, Hydro also made an early application for the IPPC permit.

Now more automated, the plant is less labour-intensive, and the workforce has been cut from 96 to 55. Looking at that another way, inasmuch as the plant was headed for closure without major investment, you could say the Hydro takeover saved 60% of the jobs.

Even with its IPPC permit it still has some targets to hit, mainly in the area of reducing emissions. But Gjellesvik is confident of success: "Some of [the targets] are very challenging... but they are reasonable. We're still having some discussion on a few items, but it's mostly about timing." Soper agrees. "It's a continual improvement. But, in the last six months, they've been making progress on most of the targets.

And they're being cooperative." The release of metals into local water supplies is less of a problem than emissions to air, the agency inspector says. "That's more easily controlled." And progress on noise abatement ­ a sensitive local issue ­ has been very good, Soper says.

"It's now well within standards. We haven't been receiving the kinds of complaints we were getting a few years ago." The plant is currently capable of producing 40,000 metric tonnes of high-quality aluminium billet a year, and will eventually be able to produce 55,000-60,000 tonnes.

And the market for recycled aluminium is growing fast. Because the metal has such a long lifespan, and because the big expansion in aluminium use in cars and construction began only about 30 to 40 years ago, it's been coming into the market in large amounts only within the last decade. Global output of recycled aluminium is now about 30% of the market.

Gjellesvik reckons it's reasonable to expect it to exceed 50% in the foreseeable future.As a commodity, aluminium also has green features. "Its sheer lack of weight reduces energy consumption, especially in transport uses," Gjellesvik says. That's why the auto industry is increasingly turning to aluminium components. The upshot: plants like Deeside are economically, as well as environmentally, viable.

Thomas K. Grose is a freelance journalist working primarily on sustainability issues.

1 February 2003

Thomas Grose