Steel Dynamics Inc. broke ground on its new aluminum rolling facility in Columbus, Mississippi. This is the first time that Steel Dynamics will enter the flat rolled aluminum products market. Operating under the name Aluminum Dynamics, the new rolling facility will focus on the production of aluminum sheet for cans, vehicles, and industrial applications. The integrated hot and cold rolling complex will have a production capacity of 650,000 tonnes of aluminum strip per year.
The new facility will utilize a significant amount of aluminum scrap, provided by Steel Dynamic’s metals recycling platform OmniSource, which is the largest nonferrous metals recycler in North America. It is expected to supply 100% of the scrap aluminum for the Columbus operation.
For the new aluminum rolling facility, Steel Dynamics orders the supply of state state-of-the-art rolling equipment from SMS group. The choice was based on the company’s long history of working with SMS, having cooperated on a number of steel rolling projects since the mid-1990s.
For the new aluminum rolling facility in Columbus, SMS will supply a hot rolling mill, two tandem cold mills, and a single-stand cold rolling mill, as well as two high-bay storage systems from AMOVA GmbH. All of the equipment will be supplied from a single source, including integrated solutions for the X-Pact® electrical and automation systems — ensuring that they work in perfect harmony and helping to shorten the plant ramp-up time and increase the overall performance of the entire aluminum flat rolling mill.
Aluminum Dynamics has also placed an order with EBNER for the supply of furnaces and associated equipment for its new aluminum rolling mill. The package includes pusher-type furnaces for the hot rolling operation, capable of preheating and homogenizing approximately 900,000 tonnes of rolling slabs annually. The order also includes the supply of requisite batch-type coil annealing furnaces and floatation-type, continuous annealing and solution heat treat lines for the finishing operations.
“Seeing the mini-mill mentality transitioning into aluminum paired with an extreme high level of professionalism and passion makes everybody from the EBNER team tremendously excited about this project and poises us to provide world class technology for highest temperature uniformity [and] industry leading productivity with a low carbon footprint,” said Robert Ebner, CEO of the EBNER Group.
The aluminum rolling mill is expected to come online in the first half of 2025.