At 750°C, aluminum can be recycled to infinity, or almost

At Ball Packaging in Bierne near Dunkirk in the north of France, the slightest waste of material goes back into the industrial circuit, well compacted in the form of a metallic "ballot".

Ditto on the largest site in Europe, in Neuf Brisach (Haut-Rhin), which melts, laminates and recycles aluminum in the same place, belonging to the Constellium group, also visited by AFP in early December.

"Aluminum continues to be very expensive," said Matthieu Vivien, director of the Ball factory, which has just converted its production lines to all aluminum in 2021 to produce soda cans, formerly made of steel.

Its main customer is the adjoining Coca-Cola bottling plant.

At the foot of each of the machines, which spit out up to 30 bodies of cans per second - seven to eight million per day - mesh bins collect the aluminum tubes with a defect.

Quality controls are drastic.

A tiny chip scratched on the paint, and hop the can is ejected from the circuit.

The plant thus recovers 15 tonnes of aluminum scrap per day.

A jackpot at a time when the white metal in high demand - especially since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February - is still trading around 2,400 dollars per tonne on the three-month contracts of the London Market Exchange (LME).

Molten casting

Much further east, in Neuf-Brisach, in the huge Constellium factory which is a Ball Packaging supplier, recycled aluminum is even on the way to becoming the site's main raw material.

Molten aluminum coming out of a giant furnace at the Constellium aluminum recycling and production plant, in Biesheim in the Haut-Rhin on December 5, 2022 © SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP

Here, enormous coils of metal are produced, rolled up into ribbons 8 kilometers long.

They are intended for the automotive industry and for the packaging of sodas and beer.

Each spool makes one million cans.

That day, the mouth of rotary oven number four spits flames as high as cars.

He has just swallowed seven tons of bales of aluminum scrap from a factory like Ball's, and old crushed cans from a household waste sorting center.

After an hour and a half, a stream of molten silver metal erupts at 750 degrees.

Aluminum like new.

In total, the factory, flagship of the Glorious Thirties, born Cégédur-Pechiney in the 1960s, became Rhenalu then Alcan and Rio Tinto, before being reborn under the name Constellium, today produces 400 tonnes of aluminum itself. recycled every day.

That is about 45% of the reels intended for cans.

Aluminum is infinitely recyclable, say all the professionals in the sector.

In reality, "we recover 85% of the metal that we put in for recycling", details for AFP Kevin De Joye, process product manager of the recycling unit of the Constellium site.

Molten aluminum comes out of a giant furnace at the aluminum recycling and production plant in Biesheim in the Haut-Rhin on December 5, 2022 © SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP

The black and red incandescent magmas that remain after combustion still contain 8% aluminum, extracted by specialized subcontractors.

Aided by the recovery plan, the manufacturer has invested 130 million euros in expansion work for a new unit which should allow it to almost double its recycling capacity, to some "300,000 tonnes of aluminum per year" from 2023, says Willem Loué, director of the Neuf Brisach site.

"Parallel Markets"

"Recycled metal is generally cheaper for us than the metal that we have to buy from sometimes distant producers such as Russia or the Middle East", argues Mr. Loué.

Above all, recycling allows Constellium's autonomy in supply, even if Russian aluminum is not yet affected by the European sanctions imposed since the invasion of Ukraine.

A coil of aluminum sheet at the Constellium aluminum recycling and production plant, in Biesheim in the Haut-Rhin on December 5, 2022 © SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP

"Recycling also uses a lot less energy than producing virgin metal, and that's good for our carbon footprint," adds the manager.

Finally, the customers themselves "are asking for more recycled metal in their products".

There remains a problem in France, that of the recovery of aluminum in "clinkers", which are the metallic ashes generated by the incineration of household garbage cans in waste treatment centers.

Each year, the country produces more than 3 million tons.

Out of 100 kilos of clinker, on average one kilo of non-ferrous metal (aluminum, copper or zinc) can still be extracted, against just under 10 kilos of steel, explains to AFP a specialist in the subject who requires the anonymity.

The rest is used as backfill in public works.

Cutting of an aluminum sample to check it at the Constellium aluminum recycling and production plant in Biesheim in the Haut-Rhin on December 5, 2022 © SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP

With soaring raw material prices, clinker is becoming a coveted material and the sector "suffers a lot of theft", says the same source, "sometimes directly from sorting centers".

The metals extracted from a landfill truck are then "sold on parallel markets" impossible to trace.

© 2022 AFP