CLEVELANDAlcoa has announced a $21 million expansion at their Alcoa Wheel and Transportation Products casthouse in Barberton, Ohio, which is expected to halve the amount of energy used to recycle aluminum for forged wheels.

As a result, the recycling facility will see the amount of greenhouse gases reduced.

Construction of the 50,000-square-foot facility began in July 2011, and it is now running at full capacity, and has created more than 30 full-time jobs.

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“Sustainability is integrated into Alcoa’s business strategy, and this facility allows us to take our recycling practices to a new level, recycling 100 million pounds of scrap aluminum each year in a more energy efficient way,”  said Tim Myers, President, Alcoa Wheel and Transportation Products.

The casthouse takes chips and solids from an existing Alcoa wheel machining plant on the same campus in Barberton, as well as from Alcoa’s Cleveland forging plant, and recycles them into aluminum billets. The billets are then shipped elsewher and forged into aluminum wheels.

The casthouse is expected to significantly reduce energy use through a combination of process improvements and reduced transportation needs.

The facility is located on the campus of an existing production facility, which has led to a cut of approximately 90 per cent in transportation-related energy use.

“This project is also part of the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Challenge, through which we will share best practices – such as linking energy goals to compensation – to help other companies reduce their industrial energy intensity,” said Kevin Anton, Alcoa’s Chief Sustainability Officer.

President Obama launched the Better Buildings Challenge to help America’s commercial and industrial buildings become at least 20 per cent more efficient over the next decade.