Augusta facility updates
Ribbon cutting is scheduled for September 20, with first material expected to be produced by the end of this year.
Aurubis decided to open the facility in Augusta in November 2021, and in December 2022 decided to double capacity and increase the investment. Groundbreaking took place in June 2022. Aurubis then started construction for Phase 2 in the first half of 2023 and is currently in the process of finalizing construction for Phase 1 and starting the commissioning process.
“So, we start normal operations in February 2025 for Phase 1, and then Phase 2 is about 12 months after that,” Schultheis said. “Within the next couple of weeks, there will be no more construction, and it will be in operations.”
When both of its modules are at full capacity, the plant in Augusta will produce 70,000 tonnes of blister copper per year from 180,000 tonnes of complex copper recycling material. The blister copper will then be sold into the US market as well as shipped to Aurubis’ smelter network in Europe.
According to Schultheis, one of the current focal points is to firmly establish sample preparation, which means focusing on preprocessing and sample preparation processes in close collaboration with the company’s commercial counterparts, suppliers and partners.
“There is a strong interest from the commercial side in what we’re doing,” he said. “Aurubis has been buying from the US market for a long time, so we do have suppliers that we have been working with for numerous years; they’re obviously excited that we are now investing in the US €740 million [$795 million] to build the first-of-its-kind secondary smelter for these types of materials.”
Augusta is already receiving volumes of copper scrap.
“We’re basically training the processes, getting them calibrated and set up,” Schultheis said. “Commissioning is about to take place, the most intense part of the construction project.”
Potential for battery recycling
Aurubis is strongly considering recycling black mass at the Augusta plant.
“We have a lot of strategic projects in our pipeline in the area of recycling when it comes, for example, to battery recycling,” Seidler said.
While no decision has been made yet, the Augusta plant is “highly attractive” for black mass recycling, she added.
The company’s pilot black mass recycling plant in Hamburg, Germany, which has been operational since March 2022, uses a proprietary hydrometallurgical process that has successfully extracted battery raw materials from black mass. In January, Aurubis told Fastmarkets that it was working on a demonstration plant as a result.
“We are scaling up with battery recycling. This demo plant will be ready at the end of August,” Seidler said. “If the demo plant yields more than 95% recovery of all metals, then the company will prepare the decision to move ahead.”
“One of these sites could be in Augusta,” Seidler continued, stating that Aurubis’ outlook on the outcome of the pilot and demo plants is “very positive.”
“A certain area of [the Augusta plant] is already dedicated to black mass recycling, so in case the decision is taken, we have the right spot for it,” Schultheis said.
“There’s a clear plan and options on the table. [It’s] a viable standalone investment decision to go to Augusta with the things we’ve decided so far, and it could also become much, much more,” he added.
Fastmarkets’ weekly assessment of the black mass, LCO, payable indicator, cobalt, domestic, exw Europe, % payable Fastmarkets’ standard-grade cobalt price (low-end) was 53-58% on June 5, up from 50-55% at the beginning of the year.
Courtesy : fastmarkets.com