The Hungarian plant is the largest aluminium extrusion plant in Europe, with six presses and extensive fabrication and surface treatment capabilities.

“With this investment, we are taking another important step in supporting Hydro’s strategy of lifting profitability and driving sustainability. We are increasing our aluminium remelt capacity in Eastern Europe, ensuring an efficient and reliable local billet supply to our customers and creating possibilities for closing the loop by taking back and recycling production scrap and post-consumer scrap,” says Paul Warton, Executive Vice President in Hydro Extrusions.

The total investment amount is EUR 88 million.

Closing the loop for customers

The plant serves many automotive customers, focusing on e-mobility, and the ability to offer “closed loops” is increasingly important for car makers and customers from other industries to reduce their carbon footprint.

The demand for recycled aluminium is increasing and the investment will allow the plant to take back production scrap and create closed loops. In a closed loop, production scrap from customers like the automotive tier-one suppliers is collected and sent directly back to the remelt plant. With the recycling process close by the extrusion process, one transportation leg is removed, and waste is limited to a minimum. The recycled aluminium goes right back into the production of advanced car components.

The automotive components that are made in Szekesfehervar include crash management systems such as bumper beams and crash boxes, as well as many structural parts of the car body, like side sill inserts, side beams and battery housings and structures. For these complex components, alloy properties are critical and the new casthouse will give Szekesfehervar the opportunity to develop and optimize the advanced alloys locally in Hungary, in collaboration with customers.

“We are building a state-of-the art remelt facility using the best available technology and creating more than 70 new jobs in our company,” says Frank Iepema, Managing Director of the Hungarian operations.

“Offering local remelt capacity and minimizing transport are important steps to support, in particular, our automotive customers in their sustainability efforts. With the new remelt facility, we can offer the full range of processes from one location to the benefit of our customers.”