Eastern Railroad Discussion > CSX: Massive new plant construction in Bay Minette AL

News sources report that Novelis, a major maker of sheet aluminum for cans will build a large facility in Bay Minette AL, near Mobile. The Baldwin County site will produce 600 kilotonnes of aluminum for cans, relying largely on recycled aluminum. The facility is designed for expansion. One major customer is Ball Corporation.

From the initial report, this would seem to be along the former L&N, now CSX, line just northeast of Mobile.  I don't believe this segment is involved in the kerfluffle over Amtrak's desire to restore passenger service from New Orleans to Mobile

This will be the first major aluminum plant built in the US in many years. Former President Donald Trump placed tariffs on imported aluminum sheet, which allowed domestic producers to raise prices, and eventually stimulated domestic construction like this. Novelis is a subsidiary of a major Indian producer.

CSX won't want the business.

Several miles from CSX. Satellite views of the site show preliminary grading for a spur. Whether it will ever be built is conjecture. https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/customers/industrial-development/search-property-types/csx-select-sites/detail/?i=33E7F22C-91AD-C73F-C9366EF30B4F69DA 

I don't see much potential for rail. How much scrap would be inbound on rail and would the new plant risk the aluminum coils with rail shipment? The Ball plant in my town would require an interline move.

Here is the Ball location map:

Locations Map - Ball

Unchecked all except 'beverage packaging" and 'Ball owned',

Ball has been pushing the aluminum cup concept.

[In the WSJ article, the] Novelis plant in Berea KY is shown loading recycled scrap into rail cars. I believe Novelis works both sides of this game.  They collect and aggregate scrap, and they process it into ingots, sheets, and slabs for can and other end products.

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Edited for more info



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/22 09:06 by Lackawanna484.

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> The Novelis plant in Berea KY is shown loading
> recycled scrap into rail cars.

 I looked at an aerial view of the Ball packaging plant in Rome GA. Though the NS runs past it, I do not see a spur.

A major customer of that Ball plant is the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Cartersville GA, twenty miles or so away. Of course, the cans are trucked.

From what I remember aluminum coils are not a big money maker for the railroads. Ship distances have to be cross country and you can’t weight out and cube out a car with aluminum coils.

Local news contains the following regarding rail use:

The facility will be the first fully integrated aluminum mill built in the U.S. in 40 years. It is expected to create up to 1,000 high-paying, advanced careers in modern manufacturing. It will also be the most sophisticated and sustainable of its kind. It will aim to be net carbon neutral for Scope 1 and 2, be powered primarily by renewable energy, use recycled water and be a zero-waste facility. It will also rely on railroad transportation, which can reduce logistics-related carbon emissions by up to 70% compared to road transport. 

joe6w Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Local news contains the following regarding rail
> use:
>
> The facility will be the first fully integrated
> aluminum mill built in the U.S. in 40 years. It is
> expected to create up to 1,000 high-paying,
> advanced careers in modern manufacturing. It will
> also be the most sophisticated and sustainable of
> its kind. It will aim to be net carbon neutral for
> Scope 1 and 2, be powered primarily by renewable
> energy, use recycled water and be a zero-waste
> facility. It will also rely on railroad
> transportation, which can reduce logistics-related
> carbon emissions by up to 70% compared to road
> transport. 

Thanks for sharing that information. Observing if it lives up to promises will be interesting. I still would expect more inbound rail that outbound, but we shall see.
 

Maybe the ols B&O style canstock boxcars will make a comeback if the coils get shipped nation wide

The beverage can has always been an always evolving business. When I was a kid all soda pop and beer that were sold in cans came in steel cans that required a "church key" to open. Then there was the  discovery that you could make cans with pull tabs. No more church keys as key fobs! This was about 1970 or so. I worked on the design of a carousel that loaded steel, pre-printed can stock (like tubes). The machine than simply simultaneusly hit both ends with dies to flange out the tube about 45 degrees, then moved the can along to another machine. This "flanger" machine was the only part of the process we supplied. To test finished product we had these steel tubes printed (lithographed I imagine) for Coca Cola, various Root/Birch Beers, and varieties of other brands and flavors. Once "flanged" the useless cans were recycled. Next up the deep extruded alumninim cans (like today's) with an aluminum top were introduced. Then some guy blew out a flip-flop when he stepped on a pop-top and the can manufacturers came up with the tabless cans, greta as finger nail breakers. Unfortunately the aging Hippies could no longer make pop-top necklaces to hang on their car's rear-view mirror, but dairy farmers were ecstatic as their herds were no longer ingesting discarded pop-tops and destroying their digestive systems which caused the cows great distress. The nail-braking technology has been expanded to cans that literally contain everything from soup to nuts. This is my useless trivia for the day unless you need to know I designed the lubrication system for the flanging carousel. The carousel was designed by someone else and my job was to keep the bearings happy as "pigs in p**p".
Reading and Northern does a huge business trans-loading, storing, and then delivering as needed, aluminum ingots or slabs. I know nothing about aluminum coils except they must be substantially lighter than steel coils. Perhaps the reason trucks can grab that business.
Gonut

engineerinvirginia Wrote:
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> CSX won't want the business.

Looks like CSX will actually serve this plant.

https://www.progressiverailroading.com/csx_transportation/news/CSX-to-serve-Novelis-aluminum-recycling-plant-in-Alabama--66546

CFI_85 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> engineerinvirginia Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > CSX won't want the business.
>
> Looks like CSX will actually serve this plant.
>
> https://www.progressiverailroading.com/csx_transpo
> rtation/news/CSX-to-serve-Novelis-aluminum-recycli
> ng-plant-in-Alabama--66546

they'll piss it away, pretty sure.

I believe CSX already serves the Novelis recycling plant in KY. Both that and the Bay Minette plant are on or near former L&N track, I believe.

You can clearly see a new wye and ROW subgrade being cleared on Google Maps to this site. 

Eric Lanctot

Gulfport, MS at one time was a fairly large ingot off-loading seaport once the Russians got into exporting aluminum in a big way, almost all the traffic generated went out by rail to intended US destinations.

I would think the can fabrication process has a "recipe" for a min/max quantity of recycle vs. virgin aluminum, so there should be regular deliveries of coils if they're not "rolling their own.." from ingots as well.

Continuing the thread theft, I believe the Reading and Northern serves the Alcoa/Cressona billet casting and extrusion plant...almost all inbound ingots used to arrive by rail.

The Ball plant in Reidsville, NC had a spur off the NS main.  Their customer was the Miller brewery 20 miles away in Eden, NC.  

Neil

 

"...you can’t weight out and cube out a car with aluminum coils."  I don't know about now; but in the 1970s, I weighed out around 300 cars/month with aluminum coils.   I was the Traffic Coordinator for Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood, WV.  We shipped around 40 TLs and 10 CLs per day.  The metal was for architectural use, transportation equipment and can stock.  Normal cars were B&O 482xxx series, with a load limit of around 140,000 pounds.  Filling up the floor of the car (no stacking) would approach that limit.  Canstock cars were B&O 480xxx series, with load limits of 170-180,000 pounds.  A full floor load of canstock coils would approach that limit, too.