Novelis boosts its production line

Nachterstedt and Oswego Automotive finishing lines begin commissioning

The Nachterstedt team recently celebrated the first coil being run on their new automotive finishing line. After breaking ground on a new facility to house the line just 15 months ago, the team has set a record for construction to ramp-up time for automotive finishing lines. Customer qualification will begin shortly with 5000-series alloys and move into the more complex 6000-series in the next quarter.

In Oswego, where a third automotive finishing line is also under construction, the project is on schedule for the first coil to be hot commissioned shortly and Final Acceptance Testing (FAT) to begin in November. The line recently completed cold commissioning, which is the process of checking and verifying that the equipment and systems are complete and working correctly without metal running through them. Following that, the line is now being threaded with the first coil, hot commissioning will begin shortly, whereby the entire process of running the coil through the finishing line is completed.

Each automotive finishing line is expected to provide Novelis with up to 110kt of additional capacity for the booming automotive market.