MetalX, an independent metals recycling business headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and investment firm Manna Capital Partners plan to invest over $200 million in a new greenfield aluminum recycling campus, with Defiance, Ohio, selected as the site for the new slab manufacturing plant. The site will also include scrap shredding and sorting capabilities and a dedicated logistics hub.
According to Danny Rifkin, CEO of MetalX, the location in Ohio meets all of the company’s logistics criteria for the project, including proximity to sources of scrap supply, access to rail services and highways, and availability of an extensive workforce. “We are excited to expand into Ohio and are looking forward to a continued partnership with the economic development groups who helped us identify and select this site and have provided invaluable guidance through the entire process,” Rifkin told Recycling Today. “They have all been great to work with.”
The jointly owned recycling and slab casting facility in Ohio will be designed to produce around 220 million lbs (100,000 tonnes) of low carbon aluminum rolling slab per year with a high percentage of recycled content. The product mix will be mainly focused on alloys for the beverage, packaging, and auto industries, as well as a small amount for industrial and specialty markets.
The advanced scrap shredding and sorting capabilities at the new plant will be complimented by MetalX’s existing state-of-the-art MetalX processing operation in Indiana. This will enable the company to process up to 300 million lbs of scrap per year, which will be supplied to the Ohio rolling slab operation along with third party aluminum customers.
Combined with a dedicated logistics center by Page Trucking, the Ohio rolling slab facility will anchor the development of a $300 million greenfield recycling campus where innovative closed-loop recycling solutions will support the aluminum industry’s sustainability and circularity goals.
The new recycling complex is expected to become fully operational in the first half of 2026. According to JobsOhio, MetalX aims to create 180 jobs at the site once it starts production.