Leadership changes, new plants and looking ahead to 2026

Novelis’ second fiscal quarter showed record aluminum premiums and higher prices weren’t enough to protect margins in its core North American market. While the company notably has been recovering from a fire at its Oswego plant in upstate New York in September, that outage only explains a small portion of the regional shipment pullback, indicating other factors at play like demand-side trends or operational adjustments. AMU’s Nicholas Bell digs into the numbers.

Meanwhile, Novelis experienced another blaze at the Oswego plant on Nov. 20. As of Nov. 21, the cold mill and heat treatment operations were back up and running, according to a joint statement from Novelis and Ford Motor Co., who is a major customer of the Oswego plant.

“Mating season” continues in earnest, with time starting to run out on traditional timetables for settlement. Most value-added-product (VAP) contracts are concluded on annual terms commencing Jan. 1 of each year. As AMU’s Greg Wittbecker notes, VAP upcharges are extremely important to North American producers’ profitability. Find out why this is being closely watched here.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to exert substantially greater jurisdiction over electricity connections to the grid. Secretary Chris Wright’s letter to FERC stated that DOE believes the commission has the legal authority to take a more direct hand in power connections.

Gränges has a dim view of the HVAC sector for the fourth quarter and into 2026. The third quarter already showed an HVAC market that weakened considerably due to falling consumer demand and destocking at manufacturers and distributors.

“We would really like to know what the HVAC market will do going forward, but as we’ve talked about also before, even the HVAC companies themselves don’t have a lot of visibility to that, as evidenced by their optimism in their Q2 reports and then the market completely collapsing one month later,” Jörgen Rosengren, president and CEO, told analysts during the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

AMU’s newest contributor, respected commodities analyst Edward Meir, has been sharing his thoughts on the economy each week. You can catch his insights each Monday. Here’s a look at his most recent column.

AMU and its sister publication Steel Market Update partnered to host a series of Community Chats this month. One webinar featured Edward Meir. He broke down broke down the surge in the Midwest premium, noting that imports may have slowed somewhat, but they haven’t stopped. You can find further discussion on that, foreign competition and the 2026 outlook here.

“If China does to aluminum in Indonesia what they did to nickel, we’re going to be in bad shape, because they moved into nickel, and they ramped it up from practically zero to millions of tons and hundreds of facilities that are just cranking out all sorts of nickel. And nickel prices have been depressed.”

In another webinar, trade attorneys Robert DeFrancesco and Alan Price of Wiley Law discussed the impact tariffs have had on steel and aluminum markets, and what could happen if they are changed or repealed.

“What you want to look at, if you’re trying to figure out where things are going, is: what are the questions being asked, and who’s asking them.”

You can see our past webinars and upcoming ones on our website.

Ball Corp. expects its beverage can manufacturing facility in Millersburg, Oregon, to come online in the second half of 2026. The facility is part of the aluminum packaging company’s effort to expand its North American production footprint. As AMU previously reported, the Millersburg site will add a production facility to Ball’s Pacific Northwest portfolio, just over a year after the company shuttered its can manufacturing plant in Kent, Washington, a few hours north of Millersburg. While domestic demand for aluminum cans remains strong, new builds and legacy assets have largely been clustered in the South, the Midwest, and the eastern seaboard.

Southwire is moving forward with another major expansion of its Heflin, Ala., medium-voltage cable plant, which includes additional aluminum dual-wire drawing machines. The company announced plans to add roughly 340,000 square feet to the site. Construction is expected to begin in late 2025 and reach operation in late 2027.

AMU has launched a series of explainers to help demystify different aspects of the aluminum market. Check out the first piece on buying metal on the London Metal Exchange, aka the “market of last resort.”

Elysis announced the start-up of its new technology at a Rio Tinto smelter, which is the next step in the transition toward large-scale, low-carbon aluminum production. As AMU’s Greg Wittbecker notes, it was an important step for Elysis, which has spent decades researching at lab scale.