Shawinigan Aluminum: Once abandoned by Rio Tinto, is set about on large-scale aluminium recycling with an investment of 10 million.

A new smelter will be built adjacent to its billet manufacturing facilities to recycle scrap aluminium from Rio Tinto and its customers who turn ingots into value-added products. The facilities will have the capacity to remelt 30,000 tonnes of scrap per year to manufacture new billets.

The billets cast from this scrap will be identified as a recycled product, which now has a value in the market.

Ghita Ouaziz, General Manager of Shawinigan Aluminum, said: "The traceability of the billets will be established and we can provide this information to our customers who request it.”

In 2014, in support with the Quebec Government, a Quebec consortium took over the casting centre that Rio Tinto wanted to pull down. Shawinigan Aluminum continues to manufacture billets there and did some recycling. But the investment announced on 15^th September will allow it to do on a large scale.

Ghita Ouaziz said: “Aluminum scrap will come from Rio Tinto and extrusion companies in Canada and the United States.”

Rio Tinto will play the dual role of a customer and a supplier to Shawinigan Aluminum.

Jean-François Laplante, Industrial Product and Investment Director, Aluminum, of Rio Tinto, said: "Rio Tinto will be able to offer its customers integrated solutions ranging from primary aluminium with a very low carbon footprint, to closed-loop recycled aluminium billets, produced from their own residues.”

Shawinigan Aluminum employs 90 people. The expansion of its activities will help maintain its jobs and add 8 more in the growing recycling sector.

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