New US aluminum sheet mills to put scrap supply in focus: industry experts

Three greenfield aluminum sheet rolling mills could join the US market over the next three years, and the new capacity may test the resiliency of North America's aluminum scrap supply, according to industry experts.

The new aluminum plants could cumulatively bring nearly 2 million mt of capacity online, and each mill is going to emphasize scrap consumption in its raw material mix, according to Gregory Wittbecker, president of Wittsend Commodity Advisors.

"It's going to be a challenge to find that scrap because of the nature of the type of scrap that wants to be bought," Wittbecker said during a panel discussion Jan. 24 at the S&P Global Commodity Insights Aluminum Symposium.

Wittbecker said the preferred grades of aluminum scrap may simply not be available, regardless of the price a mill is willing to pay. The problem may be most pronounced with supplies of used beverage can scrap, a desired feedstock, he added.

"We have got a deficit of UBC scrap that no one can talk their way out of," Wittbecker said. "We need some fundamental changes in how we go out and collect UBCs or we are simply not going to have enough."

Wittbecker said aluminum mills will need to consider alternate scrap sources and new sortation technologies to meet their requirements, though these solutions may still prove challenging.

"There is a lot of talk about taking zorba and twitch (shredded used automotive scrap) and converting it," he said. "You could be looking at up to 500 million lb of [additional] sheet and extrusion type scraps if the sortation can be done at a high enough rate of speed to allow it to be recaptured."

"The good news is that the technology seems to work," he added. "The bad news is the technology is just too slow. At best, we are probably talking about 10 mt per hour, but that just doesn't keep up with a world class [aluminum] mill."

Major aluminum mill investments were announced in 2022 by flat-rolled aluminum leader Novelis, steelmaker Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI) and beverage can manufacturer Ball (in conjunction with Manna Capital Partners). Each company emphasized the surging beverage can industry as an anticipated key end market. This will specifically increase the need to source UBC scrap as a feedstock.

The three aluminum rolling mill investments could add about 1.4 billion lb of new demand for UBC scrap in the US, which currently has a market of about 2 billion lb, said Andrew McKee, president of materials trading for Schupan & Sons, in a separate presentation Jan. 25.

SDI CEO Mark Millett said scrap supply will not likely be a concern for his company's aluminum mill.

"There is a lot of scrap out there," Millett said during his keynote address at the Aluminum Symposium. "There is elevated pricing for sure, but in most cases, it is elastic, and the availability we believe is there."

Millett said the steel industry flagged concerns over steel scrap supply nearly 40 years ago when scrap-based electric arc furnaces began to penetrate the US industry as an alternative to blast furnaces, which consume virgin metallics more heavily than scrap.

"I remember people saying that there is not going to be enough scrap, but 40 years later we have gone from about 30% EAF capability in the US industry to now approaching 75%, and we are still not out of scrap," he said.

SDI's proposed 650,000 mt/year flat-rolled aluminum mill in Mississippi will require about 900,000 mt/year of aluminum slab that it will produce mostly from recycled scrap. The company plans to build two additional aluminum recycling facilities, one in the southwestern US and one in Mexico, to leverage scrap supplies in those regions and support its sheet production in Mississippi.

Furthermore, SDI's metals recycling subsidiary OmniSource is one of the leading nonferrous scrap recyclers in the US.

Scrap will not solve primary aluminum deficit

Wittbecker said scrap has grown in popularity due to the growing emphasis on low-carbon metal sourcing, but primary aluminum supply cannot be overlooked.

"Scrap is not a panacea for solving the primary deficit in North America," he said. "There is just simply not enough scrap out there."

As more companies choose to onshore their manufacturing operations in the US in response to the oversea supply chain vulnerabilities that were exposed during the coronavirus pandemic, Wittbecker said the need for additional domestic primary aluminum supply will be more critical. However, the country's smelting industry is still hampered by energy costs.

"We still have a structural problem in primary aluminum supply in this country, but we still have not solved our fundamental problem of energy pricing," he said. "We have no national energy policy to provide energy to any high consuming energy consumer."

In its most recent third-quarter earnings presentation released in November, US primary aluminum producer Century Aluminum estimated a primary aluminum deficit in the US of 4.2 million mt in 2022.

The US imported an estimated 3.78 million mt of primary aluminum in 2022, according to preliminary data from the US Commerce Department. This is on track to be the highest volume of imports since 2019, when 3.8 million mt were shipped.