Elwood Group’s $72mn aluminum casting venture, Elwood Aluminum, produced its first test casts in June.
The first cast was for 14-inch diameter 26.5 feet-long aluminum rods manufactured at its plant located adjacent to the group’s Engineered Castings facility in Hubbard, Ohio. The company is also working on the qualification of tooling and customer certification of the product.
Elwood’s casting facility is a 120,000 sqft area with a planned output of 68,040mt of large aluminum billets and slabs. It is aimed at serving the automotive and aerospace industry along with rolling and extrusion mills. According to media reports, the plant will use aluminum scrap as raw material.
However, since its setup in 2018, construction progress of the facility has been slow and was pushed back a few months due to the pandemic. Partick Callahan, president of Elwood Aluminum, said that full production at the plant could begin in the first quarter of 2021.