Novelis has broken ground on a new $250 million aluminum recycling and casting centre in Nachterstedt, Germany. The new facility will be constructed beside an existing company-owned rolling mill.

The new centre will be able to produce 400,000 metric tonnes of aluminum sheet ingot from recycled material every year.

This investment represents another step in delivering on our commitment to dramatically increase the recycled content of the rolled aluminum sheet we provide, stated Phil Martens, President and Chief Executive Officer for Novelis.

The advanced sorting, processing and casting capabilities of the new Nachterstedt operation will propel us closer to our goal of 80 per cent recycled content by 2020.

According to the company, using recycled aluminum as input material takes only 5 per cent of the energy used to make primary aluminum from raw materials.

The centre will process used beverage cans and other forms of aluminum scrap from across continental Europe.

The German facility is one of a number of recycling and casting projects Novelis has undertaken in the last two years. Recently they opened the largest aluminum recycling facility in Yeongju, Korea.

The company is aiming to increase their recycling and casting capacity to 2.1 million tonnes by 2015 and expect the new facility to create 200 jobs when it is commissioned in mid-2014.