The Mexican Aluminum Chamber of Commerce (CANALUM) has invited Eccomelt’s Martin Hartlieb to present the company’s success story and its tremendous inroads in the Mexican market at its Metalmecanica Forum on April 8, 2022. Hartlieb will provide the backstory of Eccomelt, founded in 2006, as an offshoot of its parent company, House of Metals Co Ltd, and a company that has been innovating since its inception, with its patented, non-thermal method of recycling aluminium wheels by crushing and cleaning them through a proprietary process. He will also convey the impact of the company’s non-thermal low carbon technology that has garnered eccomelt356.2 the accolade of ‘one of the lowest carbon footprints of any aluminium alloy’ as calculated by Climate Partner, the results of which can be viewed on numerous press reports on Eccomelt website.
The Metalmecancia audience will be appraised of the new Eccomelt facility in Houston, TX, at which commercial production is starting in April and ramping up through to full capacity in September of 2022. This new plant will mainly supply the Mexican market, which has grown in importance to the company and now represents about one third of its global sales. The tremendous growth is no surprise as the Mexican aluminum industry is booming and rapidly expanding, with new investments across the entire value chain. According to CANALUM, the Mexican aluminum processors and consumers are currently in an increasingly difficult position: Not only have aluminum prices gone up (like everywhere in the world), but the availability of North American (primary) aluminum – urgently required to fulfil the new USMCA (local content) requirements – has basically disappeared. Mexico has no primary aluminum production and depends completely on imports. North America has a large deficit and therefore needs to attract offshore metal, with a significant portion coming from the largest producer of primary aluminum outside China – Rusal! With the current Russia-Ukraine war this supply has become unreliable. Supply chain disruptions, rising energy costs, shortages, and geopolitical problems have caused aluminum prices/premiums to rise to historic levels and despite the high prices, most producers are simply “sold out”. In order to fulfil the 70% local aluminum sourcing requirement for USMCA in the automotive industry, auto-suppliers are trying to source especially primary metal in the USA or Canada, but those producers have currently absolutely no metal available, at least not short or mid-term. Even most of the off-shore producers are fully booked and any shipment would be several weeks, if not months, away from a delivery to Mexico. A ready panacea, eccomelt356.2, produced within the USMCA, offers an economical and sustainable alternative to primary A356.2 with an extremely low carbon footprint. Strikingly, eccomelt356.2 has a far lower carbon footprint than any primary aluminum, even low-carbon and the ones marketed as “carbon free” – on IHI Level 1, as well as any secondary ingots. This makes it easy to understand why eccomelt356.2 has been so successful in Mexico (as well as elsewhere) and enjoys growing demand from producers of many different types of castings around the world.
Please join us online at the Metalmecanica Forum!
Registro – “Foro regional CANALUM: Cómo ingresar eficazmente al mundo del comercio exterior”. (google.com)
