Service Center Metals plans to invest $25 million in two new aluminum casting lines, according to the Richmond Times Dispatch. Construction is underway on a 190,000 sq ft addition to the factory in SouthPoint Business Park, which will bring the total size of the company’s manufacturing operations to 426,000 sq ft.
The expansion will have the key advantage of making Service Center Metals vertically integrated and self-sufficient in producing aluminum billet, Chip Dollins told Richmond Times Dispatch. The project will add a new furnace and two new casting lines, increasing the plant’s current production capacity from 75 million lbs of aluminum billet per year to 175 million lbs. “We are not only going to be completely vertically integrated, we will also be selling this log or billet to other extruders,” said Dollins. “It makes us much more self-sufficient.”
The company has a long history of naming new, big pieces of equipment after rock n’ roll stars, with one extrusion press named Elvis and another The Boss after Bruce Springsteen. The company also has two casting lines installed in 2014 named Keith and Mick after Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones (the article “SCM Commissions Unique Remelt Plant: First in the World to Horizontally Cast 14″ Billet” appeared in the October 2014 issue of Light Metal Age).
The two new casting lines currently being installed are set to continue the rock n’ roll tradition and will be named Jake and Elwood, better known as the Blues Brothers.
Dollins said the expansion will make Service Center Metals the largest horizontal casting plant in the world.