Rio Tinto is investing $29 million to build a new aluminum recycling facility at its Arvida plant in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec, to expand its offering of low-carbon aluminum solutions for customers in the automotive, packaging and construction markets. 

 The facility will make Rio Tinto the first primary aluminum producer in North America to incorporate recycled post-consumer aluminum into aluminum alloys. 

Clean aluminum scrap sourced locally from used vehicles and construction materials will be remelted to produce recycled content that will be used in aluminum billets at the Arvida smelter as well as other products from Rio Tinto’s Quebec facilities. 

With construction beginning in coming months, the recycling center is expected to be operational in the second quarter of 2024 and will have an initial capacity of 30,000 tons per year. A remelting furnace equipped with regenerative burners and an automated scrap loading system will be installed in an existing building. The project is expected to generate over $22 million (C$30 million) of economic benefits in Quebec and will create about 10 new permanent jobs at the Arvida plant.