Alvance Aluminium to invest £94 million in building new aluminium casting & recycling facilities at Fort William smelter

Alvance Aluminium, a subsidiary of industrial tycoon Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, declared that it would invest £94 million in expanding its Fort William operations by building new facilities for aluminium casting and recycling. This project is expected to secure Fort William’s future as a ‘Green Aluminium’ hub, doubling the aluminium production in Lochaber to 80,000 tonnes per annum from just over 40,000 tonnes at present. The new project will deploy 70 new employees and safeguard the jobs of 200 existing personnel.

According to a report, Alvance is all set to lodge a planning application with Highland Council for the project.

The new casting facility will produce billets or long-rounded shapes that can be moulded into different products for use in the domestic sector. The proposal for this project already marks a significant change for Alvance in Fort William, where it operates the UK’s only aluminium smelter.

Initially, the company planned to build an alloy wheels factory at the site, but the downturn in the automotive sector, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, led to a change in plans.

Besides recycling and casting facilities, Alvance investment proposal also includes the upgrade of the nearby port of Corpach, as a move to improving the efficiency of material flow. GFG Alliance is also tabling plans for a new water canning facility, located next to the Fort William plant, to package water from the Highlands into reusable aluminium cans.

Alvance intends to start the construction work of the facilities in 2021 and bring them to full operations by 2024.

Jay Hambro, Chief Investment Officer of GFG Alliance, said: “One of the key things happening in the smelter here is we are almost doubling capacity by introducing scrap metal into the process. So I think we are right in saying that we probably have some of the greenest aluminium in the world as a liquid product going into the construction material.”

He added: “We have been going through a process of working with construction contractors for some time, so we are confident we will start on or before the spring of 2021.”

According to Mr Hambro, the project will provide jobs to people with a vast array of skills. Asked if the local population could fill the demand, he replied: “We are lucky in Fort William in that there is a heritage in the aluminium space. There is a really good team here who have been very loyal [and] working on this site for a long time. If there are skills required, we have a complex training programme… and will try to recruit as locally as possible.”

Mr Gupta, Executive Chairman of GFG Alliance, said: “The transformation plan we’re announcing today underlines our commitment to investing in Scotland and our belief in the bright future of green aluminium. Recycling aluminium saves 95 per cent of the energy needed to produce primary aluminium and is a key part of GFG’s CN30 mission to be carbon neutral by 2030. By utilising domestic scrap aluminium that is currently exported, we will nearly double production here at Fort William. These investments will make us more competitive and will deliver a higher value product in the form of billet for construction to domestic and export markets.”