Hydro starts advanced aluminium scrap sorting operations in the U.S.

The joint venture Alusort is digging deeper in the aluminium scrap pile. Commercial operations of Hydro’s advanced scrap sorting technology have started at Padnos’s sorting hub in Grandville, Michigan.

Alusort is owned fifty-fifty by Norwegian aluminium company Hydro and scrap management enterprise Padnos. Thy company is located to supply Hydro’s Cassopolis and Henderson recycling plants with raw material for large-scale production of low-carbon Hydro Circal, which is Hydro's line of recycled aluminium with minimum 75 percent post-consumer scrap content.
The proprietary HySort technology, pioneered in Europe and now used by Alusort, allows more mixed and challenging types of post-consumer aluminium scrap to be sorted into fractions, before being returned to the recycling plants as feedstocks. This enables the aluminium recycling plants to achieve streamlined production of Access to post-consumer scrap is becoming increasingly important for aluminium recycling companies like Hydro in the U.S. The establishment of Alusort and the USD 4 million investment in cutting edge sorting technology answers the call for putting valuable materials from cars, buildings, electronic equipment or other consumer goods to good use in a growing domestic market rather than sending it to landfills or exporting it overseas.
Padnos personnel are responsible for running daily operations at Alusort, with Hydro personnel overseeing activities and providing technical support. With its annual sorting capacity of 20,000 tonnes of aluminium scrap per year, the Hysort machine is important for the production of high-quality, recycled alloys aimed at the U.S. automotive, building & construction, and other key markets.
“With the Hysort technology now in operation we have reached yet another exciting milestone in our strategy to double the production and expand the portfolio of recycled products in the U.S. The sorted scrap from Alusort puts us in an even better position to bring more low-carbon aluminium to the U.S. market and help some of the most demanding customers in America reach their sustainability goals,” says Pitchford.
Source: Hydro