Novelis breaks ground at Nachterstedt facility

(L-R): Mayoress Heidrun Meyer; Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt Dr. Reiner Haseloff; and Novelis Europe President Dr. Erwin Mayr break ground for a new automotive finishing line in Germany.

Aluminium rolling and recycling company Novelis has broken ground on its new automotive sheet finishing line at its Nachterstedt facility (Germany).

The €62 million (£51 million) expansion has been undertaken ‘in response to the steadily growing demand for aluminium automotive sheet for light-weight vehicle structures and body panels’.

Scheduled to come online ‘in the second half of 2015’, the new line will add 120,000 metric tonnes of annual capacity to the Nachterstedt plant’s automotive output, increasing the company's aluminium automotive sheet capacity in Europe to almost 350,000 metric tonnes.

The expansion will also create up to 120 new jobs at the plant.

Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony, Erwin Mayr, Senior Vice President of Novelis and President of Novelis Europe, said: “This investment will enable us to strengthen our leading market position in the automotive sector and enhance our position as a strong partner of the automobile industry.

“Novelis is committed to meeting the growing demand in this market and we’re aggressively increasing our capacity to produce automotive sheet in Europe and across the globe.”

‘World’s largest aluminium recycling centre’

The finishing line is one of a string of expansions being undertaken at the Nachterstedt site, which includes the development of a new aluminium recycling and casting centre.

This £157 million facility, constructed adjacent to the company's existing aluminium rolling mill, will enable the company to produce 400,000 tonnes of aluminium sheet ingot from recycled material annually, and, it is claimed, will be the ‘world's largest aluminium recycling centre’.

Reiner Haseloff, Prime Minister of the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, commented: "The construction of the aluminium recycling centre was not even completed before the investment in the new automotive production line was announced.

“In total, this creates more than 300 new jobs at this location within a few years. Thus, the demand for skilled workers in the coming years will certainly remain high. This highlights that the future opportunities for young people in Saxony-Anhalt has never been better."

As well as investments in its European plants, the company is also set to open a greenfield automotive line in Changzhou, China later this year, and is launching construction of a third automotive line at its plant in Oswego, New York.

When all of the new lines are commissioned in late 2015, Novelis' global automotive sheet capacity will reach approximately 900,000 tons per year, a three-fold increase from just a year ago.

Find out more about Novelis.