By Duncan Crowdis, Alexandria Industries and
the Aluminum Extruders Council’s Workforce Development Apprenticeship Initiative.
The shortage of talent and skills in the North American manufacturing sector is not new. The challenge has been growing and is well documented. According to research by both The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte, out of a forecasted need for 3.8 million new manufacturing workers by 2033, 1.9 million positions could go unfulfilled. A whopping 79% of manufacturing executives report that skilled labor shortage is their largest challenge to growth and the North American aluminum extrusion industry is no exception.
Most extruders are small- to medium-sized businesses with limited resources that can be dedicated to workforce development initiatives. This is where the Aluminum Extruders Council (AEC) can play an organizing and facilitation role by combining manpower and financial resources to tackle this challenge at an industry-wide level.
With a goal to help members attract and retain talent and develop critical skills, the AEC has embarked on a number of initiatives that would be difficult for any single company to take on. One of these initiatives is the introduction of a formal apprenticeship program, which initially focused on key positions in the industry that checks all the boxes. This program represents an opportunity to attract new talent, retain existing talent, and develop needed skills specifically critical in our industry.
Getting Started
In considering an apprenticeship program, there were several routes that the AEC could have taken. In the end, the Council decided to follow a formal Department of Labor (DOL) program for several reasons. First, the DOL offered a structured process that would provide a discipline that the team felt would be needed. Second, there were already DOL-approved programs for similar positions that would help the program get started quickly. Third, there are often funding opportunities for DOL programs at the federal, state, and local levels.
While many of us in the AEC were familiar with the apprenticeship concept, getting started with the DOL was an unknown for most leaders and HR managers in the aluminum extrusion industry. So, the next step was to engage a professional consultant to help the team navigate the DOL process. While the DOL is generally helpful in setting up apprenticeships, it takes time, has its own terminology, and various forms that must be submitted. The consultant walked the team through the process, helping them to understand the respective responsibilities of the AEC, the apprenticeship sponsor (the company), and the DOL.
The program started with a generic, multi-skilled maintenance apprenticeship, because skilled maintenance technicians were on virtually everyone’s priority list. While each company’s skill requirement for a maintenance technician may vary slightly, this trade requires generic skills needed across the industry. Also, there were already various federal DOL-approved apprenticeship programs focused on maintenance-type positions, and using an existing, approved program would simplify and expedite the start-up. Therefore, this relatively generic skill would provide AEC members the opportunity to work with the DOL and better understand the apprenticeship process.
An apprenticeship called an “Industrial Machine Systems Technician” was selected for the program, because it was a close fit to the AEC’s needs. As allowed by the DOL, the AEC then assembled a team from various member companies and customized the training requirements to be an even closer fit to the needs of the extrusion industry. The skill set is consistent with a multi-skilled maintenance technician, which includes hydraulics, pneumatics, electrical, electronics, and programmable logic controllers (PLCs). This is a two-year apprenticeship requiring 2,000 hours per year of on-the-job training (OJT) and 144 hours per year of classroom education, or what the DOL calls related technical instruction (RTI).
The uptake from AEC members was strong, but in moderate numbers, which allowed the program team to “learn the ropes” of working with the DOL to set up these apprenticeships in a controlled fashion. Over the latter part of 2024 and through 2025, AEC members from 11 locations in six companies were approved for a DOL apprenticeship program with a current total of nine active apprentices across the industry.
Several learnings were gleaned from the first part of this journey. Having a knowledgeable consultant was important in helping to guide and support members through the process. With this support, it took 6 to 9 months from the time the AEC started working with each company and location to the start of the apprenticeship. This involved educating key personnel about the apprenticeship process, what their responsibility would be in the process, registering the location with the DOL, identifying apprenticeship candidate(s) by the location, and registering the candidate(s) with the DOL.
In addition, RTI had to be defined, as part of the requirement to register with the DOL. The RTI was made of curriculum from local community or technical colleges, on-line learning platforms, or a combination of both. This is another area the consultant proved invaluable, as he supported each location and identified the educational resources needed for each facility.
Getting to the Meat of the Industry’s Skill Requirements
After successfully establishing this initial phase, it was now time to get into the “meat” of the industry—apprenticeship programs for extrusion press operators and die technicians. Not only are these two foundational skill areas for the industry, but also, when studying the demographics, these roles are expected to experience significant turnover in the next five-plus years. Filling these roles will require a great deal of specialized training that most operations within the industry are ill equipped to take on alone.
Not surprisingly, DOL-approved apprenticeships specific to aluminum extrusion did not yet exist for these occupations. So, pulling together more than two dozen of extrusion industry experts in these fields, training outlines for apprenticeships for both an Aluminum Extrusion Die Technician (a three-year program) and for an Aluminum Extrusion Press Operator (a two-year program) were created. Both were finalized and submitted to the DOL in mid 2024 and were approved late that year.
As of that time, any company would have been able to access these apprenticeships and their training outline from the DOL website and start the apprenticeship journey. However, knowing the training limitations of most extruders in the industry and to ensure these apprenticeship programs graduated tradespersons with industry-leading skills and best practices, the AEC believed it needed to offer a training program that could supplement a location’s traditional OJT process. It needed a training program that focuses on the understanding of the principles of best practices as they relate to dies, extrusion profiles, and extrusion processes in their plant.
In 2025, AEC decided to create a training program that would be offered to AEC member companies in a “train-the-trainer” (TTT) format. This format would create effective in-house trainers within each company with the ability to deliver industry best-practice levels of training to their employees in an economical manner when it is convenient for them. Having in-house training resources would also strengthen the long-term sustainability of this skill level in each company.
Furthermore, the format would capture and memorialize the profound industry process and skills knowledge that currently resides in a handful of people and resources across the industry, many nearing retirement—developing a training foundation that could be built upon over time. It would also create a pool of potential future industry “train-the-trainers” and an effective way to transfer this knowledge and skill to others.
With this goal in mind, a team of about 20 process experts from around the industry were assembled to create the content and process to deliver this training to members’ trainers. The focus of this training will be on process steps and skills that differentiate the best from the rest and understanding why. The AEC believes this type of training at an industry-wide scale will be a game changer for the extrusion industry. The fact that the industry’s top process experts raised their hands to donate their valuable time for this initiative is a testament to the importance and timeliness of this work.
What’s Next?
As this article goes to press, the bulk of the content and focus of this training has been completed and the first TTT session has been scheduled for later this year. Recognizing that there is a lead time of six to nine months to get a location registered and ready to start the apprenticeship training, the AEC is also working with about 20 companies to set up the apprenticeship for a press operator and/or die technician to be ready to go later this year.
The apprenticeship journey is well underway. As the AEC gains more traction with these three current industry apprenticeships, the program team will look to the extrusion industry for input into what subsequent skills training should be added to the apprenticeship program that would be deemed critical to the industry’s growth and success.
Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the August 2026 issue of Light Metal Age. To receive the current issue, please subscribe.