Featured Article

Subscribe Now

  • One of two 50 tonne tilting melting furnaces installed in SCM’s new remelt and casting plant. (All photos taken by Chip Jackson and Nick Harrison, SCM.)

    Posted in:

    SCM Celebrates 20th Anniversary with New Casthouse and Extrusion Line

    By Andrea Svendsen, Managing Editor. Service Center Metals (SCM), an aluminum extrusion manufacturing company headquartered in Prince George, VA, is celebrating 20 years of continuous operation this year. As the company moves into its third decade, it is completing a $127 million investment in a new remelt and casting plant and new extrusion plant near […]

  • aluminum extrusions

    Posted in:

    Aluminum Extrusion EPDs and the Push for Decarbonization

    By Lynn Brown, Long Point Associates. Environmental Product Declaration (EPDs) are essentially an “environmental nutrition label” for a product. But rather than telling the customer how many calories or saturated fat in a package of chips, EPDs provide data on the environmental impact resulting from the production of a specified industrial product, like aluminum extrusion. […]

  • Posted in:

    New Extrusion Applications in Commercial Vehicles

    By Andrew Halonen, Mayflower Consulting LLC. Commercial vehicles have one key difference from passenger cars. They are a tool to do work and are, therefore, specified and built with a certain application in mind, which is often referred to as the duty cycle. Maintenance of the commercial vehicle is necessary, yet downtime to fix the […]

  • Exterior of Hydro's Sunndal plant, showing aluminum billet stacked in front

    Posted in:

    Company Profile: The Collaborative Triangle of Aluminum Innovation

    By Rose Eaton, Light Metal Age. In a village in Norway called Sunndalsøra, nestled between a crystal blue fjord and two massive mountain ranges, lies Hydro Sunndal, the largest primary aluminum plant in Europe and one of the most modern. Overabundant water flowing down the mountains and the deep-sea fjord have provided the area with […]

  • Karmøy Technology Pilot in Norway. (Photo: Marius Motrøen, Norsk Hydro.)

    Posted in:

    Decarbonizing the Primary Aluminum Industry

    By Halvor Kvande, NTNU (Retired); Gudrun Saevarsdottir, Reykjavik University; and Barry Welch, Welbank Consulting.  Abstract While global average greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have changed little over the last several years, the best available data has become more reliable and has showed lower emissions. The electrolysis process has now been performed with a low emission rate […]

  • The Las Tadeas wind farm in Spain. (Source: Capital Energy.)

    Posted in:

    The Shift Toward Renewable Power in Aluminum Smelting

    By Alton Tabereaux, Contributing Editor. Sixty-eight million tonnes of primary aluminum were produced worldwide in smelters in 2021. According to the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI), the aluminum sector was directly responsible for 275 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2021, a 2% increase over the previous year. If the indirect emissions from electricity are included, the […]

  • Posted in:

    Emerging Challenges in Copper Bring Opportunity for Aluminum

    By Peter Pollak, The Aluminum Association (Retired). According to goals announced by the U.S. and European Union, there are widespread commitments to eliminate global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. An important aspect of achieving a net-zero emissions goal within this time frame is electrifying the global vehicle fleet and switching power generation to renewable energy […]

  • Posted in:

    Magnesium as the Metal of Dematerialization

    By Alex Grant, Magrathea. In 1944, Willard Dow told the U.S. Senate, “There is an epic quality involved in [taking] a ladle of gleaming metal out of a curling, white-capped ocean wave. Not even the old alchemists, in their wildest fancies, ever got that far.”1 Dow Magnesium was once the largest magnesium metal producer of […]

  • Posted in:

    Impol Completes Rolling Mill Process Audit

    The Impol Group is a well known manufacturer of semi-finished products, with 165,000 tons of rolling capacity and 100,000 tons of extrusion capacity. In its rolling division, the company produces rolled products at three production sites located in Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia, employing a total of 2,500 people across all three locations. The company’s Slovenska […]