U.S. Has Obscure Technology to Turn Into Military Grade

Seemingly with the flip of a switch, the U.S. could use an existing technology to produce all the specialized “high-purity” aluminum it needs for defense applications, according to researcher Harbor Intelligence.

In April, the Trump administration opened an investigation into whether an influx of foreign aluminum was a threat to national security. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said at the time that part of the rationale for the probe was to investigate whether domestic manufacturers might be unable to meet the Pentagon’s needs in the event of a war.

U.S. producers would have to spend about $25 million to expand their capacity to meet the military’s needs for so-called high-purity aluminum through a process called fractional crystallization, Harbor Intelligence analyst Tom Leary said Wednesday in an interview. That technology removes impurities from the primary metal and turns it into its purer form, he said.

“If the Defense Department needed the 30,000 tons a year needed to consume, they could go greenfield for $25 million to produce it,’’ Leary said at the researcher’s industry conference in Chicago.

2.5 Years

Harbor estimated that less than 1 percent of total U.S. aluminum production is consumed by the Defense Department. In the interview, Leary said there are about 75,000 metric tons of high-purity aluminum inventories in the U.S., enough to supply the military for 2 1/2 years. Additionally, he said about 117,000 tons are already produced annually in the U.S., with another 75,000 tons of idled capacity that could be flipped on.

Currently, Century Aluminum Co.’s smelter in Hawesville, Kentucky, is the only plant with the capability to mass produce high-purity aluminum in the U.S.

Harbor estimates that using fractional crystallization to produce high-purity aluminum would only be about 2 percent more expensive than using the traditional high-purity smelting process. Primary aluminum turned into the high purity variety would cost about $2,548 a ton, while high-purity aluminum right now costs about $2,493 in the spot market, Leary said. Primary aluminum for three-month delivery settled at $1,906 a ton on Wednesday on the London Metal Exchange.

“Even if we didn’t have any of the high-purity inventories or traditional production, there would be no problem,” Jorge Vazquez, Harbor’s managing director, said a the same conference. “That technology exists, and that technology operates.”