Alcoa dedicates new casting facility in Canada

An investment designed to increase casting capabilities at Alcoa’s smelter in Deschambault is now complete, producing standard-size ingots.

The new casting equipment has been constructed in an existing building to produce smaller ingots that complement the site’s two existing vertical casting pits, producing T-bars. Each small ingot weighs approximately 10.5 kilograms.

The project was first announced in July of 2022 and was safely completed.

The new casting line was recently commissioned at an internal event attended by William Oplinger, Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer and Gaby Poirier, Vice-President of Operations – North America.

"Tremendous collaboration occurred between our commercial team and our personnel at the Deschambault smelter for this investment to come to fruition,” Poirier said. “Alcoa’s Canadian smelting system, powered by hydroelectricity, offers a low-carbon footprint, and we are pleased that this project will enable increased production of value-added aluminum, directly contributing to the competitiveness of our existing portfolio”.

Adding small ingot casting to the site’s capabilities allows greater flexibility in terms of ingot shapes for both unalloyed aluminum and alloys, but also in terms of expansion of alloy product portfolio, due to alloying in smaller batches. For example, Deschambault smelter will be able to produce award-winning alloys from Alcoa’s EZCast^TM family of alloys , which have been used for megacastings and other structural automotive applications, or EzCast-NHT™, allowing to skip dedicated heat treatment of cast parts. Other common foundry alloys for automotive and industrial applications will also be available.