Second Augusta recycling plant raises local investment to $700 million - The Augusta Chronicle
Second Augusta recycling plant raises local investment to $700 million
German metal recycler doubles its Augusta investment to nearly $700 million
Joe Hotchkiss
(Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Mike Padgett Highway.)
A planned metal-smelting plant is doubling its Augusta investment to nearly $700 million as local hiring for the facility continues.
Online job listings for the Aurubis Richmond plant began emerging earlier this year, with the most recent positions posted in late August. The German-based international recycler has said the new plant taking shape off Mike Padgett Highway will be the first multimetal recycling facility in the United States.
When Aurubis broke ground in June 2022 for the recycling and secondary-smelting facility, company executives said the initial $340 million investment would help employ about 125 people. But earlier this year, Aurubis signed a supply contract with German metal and machinery company SMS Group GmbH to help build a second plant module for Aurubis Richmond.
The second module is expected to boost its capacity from an annual 90,000 tons of complex metal scrap materials to 180,000 tons, according to Aurubis. The total local investment now comes to about 640 million euros, or close to $700 million, and the new total number of employees could reach 200.
Phase one of the plant is scheduled to go online in early 2024. The new second phase could start production as early as 2026.
Heavy metal: Copper recycling plant aims to bring jobs to Augusta
The Aurubis plant will be executing an industrial process called secondary smelting. In that process, scrap metal is gathered and reformed into material used in producing more finished products.
Aurubis Richmond will be the company's second facility in the United States. Aurubis Buffalo employs about 650 workers at an upstate New York plant that produces copper and brass sheets for products such as roofing copper and brass hose nozzles.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
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On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”