Fort Wayne, Indiana’s industrial scrap metal sorting and recycling firm Sortera Alloys, Inc. announced late last week US$10 million in funding from Novelis and Breakthrough Energy Ventures to develop new methods for sorting automotive aluminium alloys for end-of-life recycling.
Sortera utilizes artificial intelligence to sort mixed aluminium alloy scrap into individual alloys, allowing for quicker and easier recycling and enabling firms to reduce their CO2 emissions as well. The firm notes that recycling aluminium uses up to 95 percent less energy than producing primary aluminium from freshly-mined bauxite ore.
Michael Siemer, CEO, Sortera Alloys, said in a press release that his firm is excited at the new investment.
“We are thrilled to have this important investment from Assembly, together with additional funds from Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Novelis. The funding will be used to help scale our operations, grow the team and provide high-quality metal recycling from automobiles.”
Chris Thomas, co-founder and partner at Assembly Ventures, noted the advantages his firm offers the metals industry.
“Sortera Alloys is a technology driven start-up that could only be created in the industrial heartland. For decades automotive and manufacturing companies the world over have been working to implement truly circular supply chains. Sortera is poised to power efficiencies in industrial and manufacturing supply chains, and create true circularity of manufacturing inputs, across the Western world.”
Derek Prichett, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development at Novelis, said the link-up with Sortera is advantageous for both parties.
“The partnership with Sortera will allow Novelis to further increase the recycled content in our products, in particular, our automotive materials. This will enable us to meet our own ambitious goals of reducing our carbon footprint, as well as help our customers achieve their own sustainability goals.”
Sortera currently has an agreement with Novelis to deliver to them aluminium scrap for recycling into aluminium sheet for use in the automotive industry.