Aluminium producer and recycler Speira is upgrading its plants in Germany. Two new tiltable rotary furnaces are to be built at its Grevenbroich and Töging sites, replacing the existing units, the company announced in mid-July. The four new furnaces are specially designed for recycling "low grades", or heavily contaminated scrap, and the dross produced during the melting process.
In total, Speira is investing around €11m in furnaces and associated infrastructure.
It is Speira's second major investment in just a few weeks. At the beginning of June, the company unveiled plans to expand the capacity of its Rheinwerk plant in Neuss, and to make it into a leading European recycling hub at a cost of around €40m. The expansion at Neuss is to include the construction of a new, fourth recycling furnace as well as the remodelling of the casting plant. The permit application for this project has been publicly available since mid-July.
New plant technology increases metal yield
The new furnaces now planned in Grevenbroich and Töging offer a number of advantages, according to Speira: the metal yield will be increased and energy efficiency improved thanks to state-of-the-art burner technology and automatic charging. Work will be safer and easier for employees as individual components can be accessed easily for maintenance, and the molten metal can be tapped with the furnace doors closed. The charging machines also allow wheel loader and forklift traffic in front of the furnaces to be minimized. In addition, the furnaces are meeting the most recent environmental standards and are "H2 ready", meaning that they could be operated with hydrogen in the future.
"We take a holistic view of our contribution to a functioning circular economy. That’s why we don’t just look at the pure, easy-to-recycle scraps, but also at the more difficult lower grades and by-products. Wherever aluminium is in it, we want to get the maximum out of it and put it back into the cycle," explained Ralf Köring, head of Recycling Services, a unit which serves Speira’s other business areas as well as external customers, such as businesses in the automotive and packaging industries.
First new furnace to go online in May 2025
The four new furnaces will be installed in stages: The two furnaces in Grevenbroich are scheduled to go into operation in May 2025 and May 2026, respectively. In Töging, the first furnace is scheduled to start production in October 2025 and the second in October 2026.
The new "S4" recycling furnace at the Rheinwerk site which will produce liquid metal from aluminium scrap is also scheduled to go into operation at the beginning of 2026. According to the permit application documents currently accessible through the Düsseldorf regional government (Bezirksregierung Düsseldorf), the fourth unit is to be a two-chamber smelting furnace with a maximum annual input capacity of 83,000 tonnes.
The input materials are to include post-consumer or market scrap, post-industrial (pre-consumer) scrap in the form of solid metal, loose or crushed in bales. The maximum output capacity of the S4 is 66,000 tonnes of liquid aluminium per year, which is then to be further processed in the casting furnaces on site or transported directly in crucibles to the neighbouring rolling mill in Alunorf GmbH, which is operated by a joint venture between Speira and Novelis.
Melting and casting capacity in Neuss remains unchanged despite new furnace
Even though Speira will be adding a furnace, the company is not seeking to increase the production capacity of the site. The Rheinwerk's permitted melting capacity is to remain limited to 370,500 tonnes of solid metal per year. In addition to the recycling furnaces S1, S2, S3 (which comprise the existing UBC plant for recycling used beverage cans) and the new S4, the four casting plants can also be used to some extent to melting down solid metal.
The annual production volume of sawn ingots at the site would also be unchanged at 435,000 tonnes. Among the reasons Speira gave for the unchanged output were the longer melting times that were needed for the production of higher-quality products, and the optimisation of raw materials use.
Because the inputs to be melted in the new S4 furnace will include contamination with organic materials, the scrap would be subject to increased handling and sampling requirements. Accordingly, Speira is planning to build a new sampling hall. The permit application includes information on this facility as well as a description of two new compactors to compress the aluminium scrap to a suitable density prior to charging into the furnace.
In order to improve in-house dross handling and reduce the amount of dross sent for treatment by external service providers, Speira is also planning to expand the dross cooler and create new storage areas.
