Alcoa to Supply Nexans with Low-Carbon Aluminum, Including Metal from ELYSIS™ Technology

February 22, 2024

Alcoa announced that it will supply global cable producer Nexans with aluminum produced from a revolutionary process that eliminates all direct greenhouse gas emissions from the traditional smelting process.

Nexans will be the world’s first cable manufacturer to use metal from the breakthrough ELYSIS™ process, which replaces all greenhouse gas emissions with oxygen. The technology uses proprietary materials, including inert anodes, first developed at the Alcoa Technical Center near Pittsburgh. That research and development work became the technological basis for ELYSIS™, a technology partnership that is working to ramp up the process to commercial scale.

Several Nexans facilities in Western Europe and Scandinavia will use aluminum produced from the ELYSIS™ process to start qualifications for the metal’s use in various types of cables, from low, medium to high voltage. Aluminum rod produced with this breakthrough ELYSIS™ technology could eliminate a significant portion of carbon dioxide emissions in the future.

This latest announcement further builds on the two companies’ historic long-term relationship. Alcoa already supplies Nexans with EcoLum™, a primary aluminum with a carbon footprint that is nearly three times lower than the industry average.¹

Since the launch of ELYSIS™ in 2018, the technology company has produced R&D quantities of the metal. Alcoa is marketing and selling its share of the ELYSIS metal, which has also been used for the wheels on the Audi eTron GT, the automaker’s first electric sports car. Apple is also an investor in the technology and has used ELYSIS metal for some of its products.

ELYSIS is a key component in Alcoa’s technology roadmap of research and development projects that also includes projects such as the ASTRAEA™ metal purification process and the Refinery of the Future.

This agreement fully highlights Nexans’ position at the forefront of the sustainable electrification of the world and regarding crucial issues such as low-carbon emissions.

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