Hydro will start supplying OEMs with aluminium strip for exterior body applications, expected to be the fastest-growing segment in rolled aluminium products for the automotive industry, the company announced on 22 June. Hydro's corporate management approved an investment of €20 million to build a new annealing line to deliver exterior body sheet, at its rolling mill in Grevenbroich, Germany. The first customer contracts are signed, and supply to car manufacturers will begin at the end of 2008.
The expansion is in line with Hydro's recently announced decision to retain and develop the company's automotive structures business. Earlier this year, Hydro sold a share in a magnesium components producer, its engine castings business (comprising three plants, in Germany, Austria and Hungary) to Nemak, and a complex alloy automotive structures plant in Worcester, to Holden, which it said did not fit the crash management focus of its remaining aluminium structures business.
Hydro claims to produce more aluminium bumper beams and precision tubes, for example for heat exchanger systems, than any other company, and is also a leading supplier of foundry alloys, extruded profiles and rolled products for use in car manufacture.
- On 21 June Hydro announced that it had entered into an agreement to participate in the development of a CO2 sequestration test centre - "European CO2 Test Centre Mongstad" - at Mongstad, in south-west Norway, with project partners the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, Statoil, Norske Shell, Dong Energy Generation and Vattenfall. The cooperation agreement covers the planning and preparation phase of the test facility and will extend until an investment decision is made, expected in the first quarter of 2008.
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