Alcoa Inc. (NYSE:AA) and Luxfer Holdings plc announced today that they have reached an agreement under which Alcoa will acquire the aluminum plate, sheet and soft-alloy extrusion manufacturing operations and distribution businesses of British Aluminium Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Luxfer.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The manufacturing operations are located in England and Wales and the distribution businesses, operating under the names Aluminium Supply Aerospace and Baco Metal Centres, are located in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Also included in the purchase is the British Aluminium sales office in St. Louis, Missouri. Operations based in the UK will become part of the Alcoa Europe business unit.

These businesses generated approximately 220 million pounds sterling (US$360 million) in revenue in 1999 and have about 1550 employees.

The transaction is subject to clearance by antitrust authorities in Europe. Alcoa indicated that it would submit its application for clearance in September. The transaction does not require U.S. regulatory approval.

Ricardo E. Belda, Alcoa vice president and president Alcoa Europe, commented, "The acquisition of the British Aluminium businesses further demonstrates Alcoa's commitment to the European markets. In particular, this transaction will enable us to offer an extensive line of Alcoa products to the aerospace and plate customers from these European-based facilities."

Ian McKinnon, Luxfer's Chief Executive, noted, "This represents an important milestone for the Luxfer Group. Although we have made five acquisitions and divested of two small operations, this sale represents the first major reshaping of the Group since it was formed in 1996. It will provide Luxfer with funds to reinvest in its retained businesses, which are strong businesses with many growth opportunities."

Other British Aluminium manufacturing operations -- for aluminum tube products and hard-alloy extrusions, as well as Luxfer Gas Cylinders, Superform Aluminium, Magnesium Elektron and MEL Chemicals -- are not involved in the sale and will continue under Luxfer ownership.

Founded in 1888, Alcoa is the world's leading producer of aluminum and alumina and a major participant in all segments of the industry: mining, refining, smelting, fabricating and recycling. Alcoa serves customers worldwide in the packaging, automotive, aerospace, construction and other markets with a great variety of fabricated and finished products. The company has over 300 operating locations in 36 countries, out of which over 80 are located in 12 European countries.

The Luxfer Group is an international group of businesses that specialize in the design, manufacture and supply of high performance engineering materials, alloys and semi-fabricated components to manufacturing industry worldwide.

This year programmed is shaping up to be one of great quality. With a little over 5 months until showtime - Metal Bulletin has the committment of the following speakers.

Producer strategies in a globally competitive business restructuring and cost containment - Jon-Harald Nilsen, Executive Vice-President Norsk Hydro and President, Hydro Aluminium, Norway

2 A review of LME aluminium contract issues and LME Select2 one year on - Simon Heale, Chief Executive, London Metal Exchange, UK

3 Exploiting the potential of deregulated energy market - a representative of KW International, UK

4 The aluminium extrusions sector: exploring the market and developing new applications - Francois Coeffic, Group Vice President, European Operations, Sapa AB, Luxembourg

5 Aluminium in the global packaging business: working to make the most of a growth market? -- Lars Emilson, Group Director -- Beverage Cans, Rexam plc, UK

New high performing zinc-aluminium ZA casting alloys (ZA-8, ZA-12, ZA-27) give superior mechanical properties which designers can apply utilizing die casting technology. In general the ZA alloys are stronger, harder and offer more creep resistance than standard zinc alloys and can be used where bearing properties are important.

Aluminium alloys with 0.5-0.9% Fe content have largely replaced 1350 EC alloy for making electrical circuits because the latter continuously suffered from gradual loosening at terminals, which led to overheating. This problem has been totally removed in new conductor alloys without sacrifice of conductivity.

To get economic benefit of weight advantage of aluminium wire should be capable of attaching securely to standard fixtures without special handling techniques. But EC wire on binding screw terminals tightened to a standard torque may become loose, when the wire heats due to being overloaded. The wire gets expanded more than the Cu-alloy fixture and creeps to relax the added stress.

On getting cool it contracts to a smaller dimension, whereby the area of contact is reduced and it permits oxide to form at interface. On a subsequent current overflow, the overheating increases which leads to further loosening of wire. EC wire annealed for adequate bend ability gets sub structurally loosened at 200°C and ultimately fails due to repetitions of these cycles.

The new alloys (800 series) of 0.5-0.9% Fe have much better microstructural stability and creep resistance and, therefore, they are not prone to these failures.

While annealed to the same ductility or bend ability, the high Fe alloys are double strong. This capability has been established by practical field use of many years in USA, Europe and South Africa after these alloys were introduced in 1968.

Better and latest alloys which not only provide high integrity to terminations but are suitable for magnet wire after normal hot annealing have been made after adding a third alloy to improve its performance examples are 0.5% Fe with 0.5% Co and 0.5% Fe with 0.2-0.4% Si.

Processing and microstructure:
In continuous casting a bar of 50cm2 is made at 16 m/min on a 2.5m diameter copper wheel. The quick solidification results in a 20 μm dendrite arm spacing and eutectic red cpacing of about 0.2 μm with a supersaturation of about 0.1% Fe. These very fine particles play a significant role in giving stability to substructure while being incapable of nucleating crystallization.

The presence of sub grains has been known in hot worked aluminiums but without quantitative determinations of the dimensions or the effects on properties. As the temperature rises from 200-450°C, the cold yield strength of the hot worked product decreases greatly from the strengthening made by 97.5% cold rolling.

As has been seen in many hot worked metals, the yield strength is inversely proportional to sub grain diameter. Because the temperature is less and strain rate is high in a given pass than those in the previous one, substructure “inherited” from i.e., carried forward from, the latter is altered by dislocations to the existing walls to raise their density and by formation of new walls to subdivide the sub grains lessening their size.

Aluminium is the choice metal for making light weight parts of vehicles, aerospace and transport industries. Casting of liquid aluminium alloys into metal moulds utilizing systems like gravity, low pressure and high pressure die casting is an economical way of making difficult shapes which need minimum machining. Australia’s auto industry supports a large local die casting business, manufacturing parts that include cylinders, pistons and engine sumps etc.

Rising demand in world auto market for aluminium die cast parts is producing great opportunity and challenge for Australian business which wants to emerge as a global player. By setting partnerships between Nissan and Ford, CAST has developed and produced new and latest technology that has been benefiting our partner’s products. In turn these skills have created IP that is poised on the verge of commercialization.

To increase production of high pressure die casting by lessening its time cycle by 30%. The cycle time has been reduced by more than 20% on certain parts at two industry partner plants. The project involves identifying places where cycle time may be reduced, and doing it practically to prove the findings of research. This made it essential to involve shop floor staff to implement the changes needed in systems. These trails are generally in variation with day to day production and due to true co-operation of shop floor staff it become possible to achieve targets.

The third year of project has seen the true spirit of co-operation between researches and industrial partners in which latest research results got through simulated trails have been done practically on shop floor with help and support of Ford and Nissan staff. The changes once tested during trials have been incorporated in production systems giving benefits of reduced costs by reducing time of each part manufactured. An example of reduced time achieved is at Nissan on a gearbox side cover made in twin cavity die has given successful results after many months; from an initial cycle time of 75 seconds down to 60 seconds. While research at Ford on a changer housing casting, has been successfully implemented by lessening cycle time from 90 seconds to 74 seconds.

In future the reduction of time cycle will be tried for other parts as well.

Automatic fault detection in aluminium die casting:
This involves developing a system to detect surface and sub surface defects.

A fully automatic fault detecting machine named CAST vision has been produced and a prototype process is in place for extended in-plant on-line trials. This is the third year of this project and it is giving good results. The result of algorithm which was designed and developed in 2nd year has been put to test now. By prototyping the CAST team had designed and developed a working system CAST vision. This can discriminate between good and defective parts.

The prototype system has capacity to detect blocked holes on any of holes on this complex casting. Offline processes have also been readied which will detect hot tears and cold shuts on Ford’s structural sump casting.

Work at Nissan on their pump cover casting has led to a CAST vision type process for in-line fault detection. The process can take images and find certain types of defects on the surface part. This project has shown that advances in mechanical vision applied for finding faults of aluminium castings can be converted from project stage to a working prototype successfully. The next stage is take concepts from single stage to multistage processes capable to handle more complex shapes and surfaces. This result will become a strong contender for future commercialization.

When the novice hobby metal caster first thinks about melting metal, the immediate thought is to collect a big box of Al bottle tops and Al drink cans to melt. The most likely reason for this is that the material is relatively easy to collect and handle, and the thinking behind the idea is that because of its lightweight it should melt quite readily.

Then why is it so difficult to melt & reclaim aluminium drink cans, bottle tops & swarf in a hobby gas fired crucible furnace?


To melt & reclaim light weight scrap aluminium requires the use of some specialised equipment. Most commercial scrap metal recovery foundries use what is known as a rotary type melting furnace. This type of furnace is designed in such a way that the flame actually strikes the rotating furnace lining, and the heat spreads quickly around the furnace walls, which absorb the heat. As the furnace rotates, the heat is also taken up or absorbed by the scrap metal.

It is essential to melt the metal under a cover of MOLTEN FLUX, otherwise very heavy metal oxidation results and subsequently very little metal is actually recovered.

As each piece of small swarf or chip melts, it forms a globule of liquid metal surrounded by a shell of oxide. The skin tension of this oxidant around the globule prevents coalescence, i.e. (to grow together) and because of the large surface area presented by the mass of globules, with the increase of oxide formation loss of yield is bound to take place.

The skin of the oxide on the molten globule has to be "ruptured" in order to allow coalescence, i.e. to allow the clusters of globules to actually join together in their molten state.


A molten flux encourages coalescence by chemical action.

While the rotation of the furnace provides a mechanical action. The special fluxes; coveral 48 & 57 provide the chemical action, they are the best type of fluxes to use when melting Al metal in the region of 590 to 600 C. (Coveral 48 & 57 products are copyright Foseco Pty Ltd)

This flux may or may not provide similar results when used in a normal crucible gas fired furnace, but the yield loss will still be considerable.

The hobby foundry worker would be better off directing his energy towards collecting easier to source, better quality scrap to melt, such as discarded cylinder heads, inlet manifold castings, auto pistons, etc. Or if the budget stretches that far, purchase commercially produced ingots, which are of a known quality. Commercial ingots will provide top quality metal right from the word go.

Trying to melt lightweight Al drink cans and bottle tops is generally a waste of time for the hobby worker, unless you use the fluxes mentioned above, and use the correct furnace. Otherwise a lot of gas will be wasted heating the hobby crucible furnace for very little gain in metal yield.