ALVANCE, the aluminium business of Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, has wrapped up its acquisition of the Duffel aluminium recycling and rolling mill located near Antwerp in Belgium.

Established in 1946, Duffel is a European producer of aluminium rolled products and is said to be a leading player in the European automotive body sheets (ABS) market.

The Duffel aluminium recycling and rolling mill has processing capacity of 250ktpa. Presently, the plant reuses nearly 104ktpa of aluminium scrap material, which is expected to help ALVANCE closer to its objective of achieving 1mtpa of capacity.

Sanjeev Gupta – GFG Alliance Executive chairman Sanjeev Gupta said: “Today marks yet a further milestone in our European investment journey and a step closer to our aim of establishing an end-to-end international low-carbon aluminium champion creating high-value products and sustaining high-value jobs.”

“Duffel is a premium operation with a highly-skilled workforce. It is a market leader in body sheet production with potential to expand its capacity widen its customer offerings. We see that asset strength with potential and want to help drive expansion.”

The acquisition of the mill, which will be renamed ALVANCE Aluminium Duffel, marks a significant strengthening and growth of ALVANCE’s downstream portfolio and its goal to be a major supplier of value added, sustainable aluminium products to the industries like the automotive sector and others.

ALVANCE said that it is committed to maximising the volumes and range of value-added products produced at the 1,000 worker site. Besides, the company intends to boost the production capacity by considerably investing in the modernization of its production equipment.

Duffel is also expected to benefit from synergies with ALVANCE Aluminium Dunkerque, one of the largest aluminium smelters in Europe, which includes a direct supply of high-quality primary aluminium.

Arnaud de Weert – ALVANCE CEO said: “ALVANCE is clearly a leader in offering low carbon and high-quality aluminium product to a growing market.  We are building a new aluminium business at a time when other aluminium producers are leaving Europe for lower cost territories.

“We believe that our growing aluminium value chain based on low carbon production of a high-quality material with proximity to our customers can not only compete with products from further afield but outclass them.

  ALVANCE, Antwerp, Arnaud de Weert, Belgium, Duffel, GFG Alliance, Sanjeev Gupta