Aluminium rolling and recycling company Novelis has announced the opening of a new aluminium recycling and continuous casting line at its Pieve Emanuele facility in Milan, Italy.

The €12 million (£10.1 million) expansion marks the company’s ‘largest single investment in Italy in the past decade’ and is reported to be a ‘key part’ of the firm’s drive to ‘enhance the competitiveness of its Italian operations’.

Developed by Novelis PAE, a Novelis group company that provides premium casting and molten metal treatment solutions for aluminium producers around the world, the continuous casting equipment was implemented to enable Novelis to recycle aluminium scrap into ‘high quality-aluminium sheet’ for further processing at its operations in Italy and Germany.

Speaking of the opening, newly-appointed Senior Vice President of Novelis and President of Novelis Europe, Erwin Mayr, said: "This investment reflects Novelis's ongoing commitment to our high recycled content strategy, to the environment and, importantly, to our longstanding operations here in Italy.

"The opening of the new line not only increases the recycling and casting capacity at the Pieve plant, but it also contributes to the company's global goal of increasing the recycled content of its products from 43 per cent today to 80 per cent by 2020."

Pieve Emanuele

The Novelis plant at Pieve Emanuele is an integrated recycling, continuous casting, rolling and finishing operation. The aluminium sheet and coil produced at the facility is sold to end users in a number of industrial and construction markets.

Aluminium sheet produced at Pieve is also supplied to other Novelis plants, including those in Bresso, Italy, and in Germany, where it is processed into pre-painted, textured and bright finish material for use in transportation, construction and industrial applications such as roofing, architectural cladding and domestic appliances.

There are currently around 400 people working at Novelis’s Italian plants in Pieve and Bresso.

Plant Manager Gianmatteo Martinelli said: "The Pieve plant has over 50 years of experience in rolling and recycling aluminium. This investment and the wider programme in Italy will strengthen our operations here while also bringing new sustainable manufacturing processes to the region through Novelis innovation.

"Furthermore, the new line will also enable our Pieve plant to supply more recycled sheet to our operations in other parts of Europe, generating significant logistical and environmental advantages."

Evercan production

The expansion of the company’s Pieve plant follows news that Novelis has developed the ‘industry’s first independently certified, high-recycled content aluminium designed specifically for the beverage can market’.

The ‘evercan’ body sheet, developed to lower the carbon footprint of consumer packaging, contains a ‘minimum’ of 90 per cent recycled aluminium and is now commercially available to operators in the European and North American beverage can industry. It will be made available worldwide ‘later this year’.

According to Novelis, when using evercan in conjunction with a can end composed of a different alloy, beverage can manufacturers will be able to produce 12-ounce beverage cans made from ‘at least’ 70 per cent recycled metal.

Read more about Novelis.