Aditya Birla Group is on the rise in North America

Across the North American landscape, from pulp mills in New Brunswick in Canada, down to the aluminium recycling plant in Greensboro, Georgia, lies the widespread footprint of the Aditya Birla Group.

Four of the Group’s biggest businesses – Carbon Black, Aluminium, Pulp & Fibre, and Trading – have a substantial presence in the north American continent. Novelis alone has 19 sites in the region.

The Greensboro facility, in fact, has an interesting history. It is the first stand-alone can recycling facility in the US. And it has continued to power Novelis’ sustainable aluminium vision, making the company the world’s largest recycler of aluminium cans. Over 75 billion cans every year, no less.

Apart from being the world’s largest producer of beverage can sheet, Novelis is also the world’s largest supplier of automotive aluminium. Its metal is used by the who’s who of the automotive industry and is a critical component of 225 car and truck models on the road.

Novelis works closely with OEMs such as Ford, Jaguar, Audi, BMW, Nissan, and Volvo to create closed-loop manufacturing processes – where tonnes of aluminium scrap are reprocessed into auto aluminium. What does that do? It makes aluminium manufacturing 95% less energy-intensive, conserves natural resources, and also makes your car or truck less of a contributor to climate change.

Novelis is not the only Aditya Birla Group company that has a foothold in the auto industry. Birla Carbon, one of the world’s largest producers of carbon black, operates three manufacturing sites in North America. Its carbon black solutions enhance the performance of tyres, paints, inks and toners, plastics, adhesives, rubber goods and more.

Birla Carbon converts fossil fuel residuals and other products into carbon black that goes into every 8th tyre in the world. You can also find Birla Carbon’s product in many other applications such as UV protection, automotive paints, sunglasses, conveyor belts, car batteries, and more.

Birla Carbon traces its US legacy back 170 years to 1848, when L Martin began production of lamp black. Over the decades, L Martin and a host of other small companies came into the fold of Columbian Chemicals, a US carbon black company based in Georgia. In 2011, Columbian Chemicals was acquired by Birla Carbon, which catapulted the Group into the global leadership position.

If black is the colour of Birla Carbon’s main product, green is the shade for AV Group’s operations in Canada. The AV Group operates three pulp mills in Canada and is a part of flagship company Grasim Industries.

The pulp produced in the Canadian mills is a key part of the Group’s extensive globe-straddling textile operations. Flagship company Grasim Industries operates a value chain that covers sustainable forests and pulp that gets processed into viscose staple fibre. The Group is the world’s largest producer of VSF, which eventually transforms into fabric and forest-friendly fashion.

With a global network of manufacturing operations (the Group runs more than 130 plants worldwide), it makes logical sense to have logistics as part of the business. Swiss Singapore Overseas Enterprise is the trading unit of the Group with offices in both USA and Canada.

The Aditya Birla Group’s North American footprint is growing, with the latest being the acquisition of aluminium rolling company Aleris, which adds its footprint to Hindalco-Novelis.

This article is part of a series on the Group's global footprint and operations in North America, Asia, Europe, Africa and South America