We have growth ­potential

An interview with Dr. Thomas Sturm, Senior Vice President Corporate Development

We want to talk about growth. What is Aurubis concentrating on at the moment?

Growth is an important objective of our strategy – especially when it comes to mulitmetal. Concretely, this means that we’re boosting our capacity and expertise in processing valuable metals that are contained in our raw materials.

The acquisition of Metallo was therefore the perfect strategic step. At the same time, however, we’re also working on a variety of internal projects to grow in our central business, copper. Here, the focus is on enhancing efficiency and productivity.

The acquisition of the Metallo Group means more metals, more capacities, more recycling ...

Metallo ideally complements the existing smelter network – especially due to their added skills in the separation of copper, nickel, tin, zinc, and lead. With the sites in Lünen, Olen (Belgium), and Beerse (Belgium), we have a “recycling triangle” in which we can process a broad range of recycling materials highly efficiently and recover the most important metals in a marketable form, including further processing in Hamburg.

What objective is Aurubis pursuing by building up its smelter network?

We’re focused on the following goal: Aurubis processes raw materials with environmentally friendly, sustainable, and efficient methods, recovering valuable metals and making them available for further processing – and returning valuable recycling material back to the cycle at the end. This helps us conserve resources and provide important metals for future applications in our industrial sector and elsewhere.

Aurubis stands for multimetal. Which projects contribute to this part of the strategy?

One project in Hamburg, for example, has the purpose of improving and expanding the capacity for processing complex, multimetal materials from internal and external sources. However, we’re also working on other projects to increase our nickel processing. Then there are projects and ideas arising from our collaboration with Metallo. Following the initial integration phase, we’re now in the process of consolidating, prioritizing, and positioning the strategic projects of both companies for the long term.

Copper remains the central business. What leverage for growth does this area offer?

As a reliable, high-performance partner, we are firmly established in the copper industry. We see significant potential in digitalization and automation. For instance, we will take advantage of the expertise offered by azeti to optimize our production processes in a targeted approach because increasing throughput means more efficiency and better cost-effectiveness.