Aluminium Trade Fair | Speira Strategically Positions Europe as Aluminium Recycling Hub, Investing Millions of Euros in New Capacities

To become Europe's top aluminium recycler, Speira is investing more in building new or expanding existing recycling capacity. According to a recent report, the European-owned company is investing €40 million to increase recovery capacity with the renovation of the Rheinwerk plant, capable of reducing flooding by up to 1.5 million tonnes per year.

Regarding the project, Boris Kurth, head of Speira's canning business as well as Rheinwerk's restoration and casting business, said: "We want to be the number one in aluminium restoration in Europe for the past. Over the course of 20 years, we have built furnaces with leading restoration capabilities and Europe's most modern UBC replacement sorting plant for the highly energy-intensive primary production of aluminium in the Rhine plant."

Aluminium Trade Fair understands that Rheinwerk's new restoration furnace will be completed in 2025 and could begin operations in early 2026. The project also includes the renovation of the third of the four existing casting centres to increase the efficiency of metal recovery while reducing the ecological footprint. The new recovery furnace will be used to melt moulds that are processed into beverage cans after rolling.

Beverage cans are a fast-moving product with a 60-day lifecycle that includes production, packaging, retail, and final consumer consumption, suggesting that the same aluminium has the potential to pass through Speira's recovery facility multiple times per year, thereby reducing the carbon footprint and contributing to a circular economy.

Step by step, Speira is becoming Europe's recycling centre. First, the company is installing new furnaces and renovating its foundry. It will then convert a third of its obsolete smelters into a new scrap warehouse. It will provide storage space and facilities for sampling incoming scrap and preparing it for melting.

"The long halls allow us to think big and plan big. This huge new scrap warehouse creates space for 'feed' for all our recycling furnaces, not just the new ones," says a delighted Kurth.