Growth Markets
November 20, 2025
Update: Novelis' Oswego plant partly reopens after most recent fire
Written by Stephanie Ritenbaugh
Novelis Oswego plant in upstate New York has partly reopened after another fire broke out on Nov. 20. The facility’s hot mill was already shut down due to a fire in September.
As of Friday, Nov. 21, the cold mill and heat treatment operations are back up and running, according to a joint statement from Novelis and Ford Motor Co., who is a major customer of the aluminum plant.
“The facility continues to ship finished material to supply Ford,” the statement continued. “Novelis will continue to leverage alternate sources, including its global network of plants and industry peers, to mitigate impact.”
The fire, which broke out about 8:45 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 20, was “swiftly contained” and the plant was evacuated with no injuries to employees, contractors or first responders reported, the companies said.
Novelis did not respond to questions regarding the source of the November fire or if this incident would affect the reopening of the hot mill.
As AMU previously reported, the Oswego hot mill was scheduled to restart in December. Novelis had said during its third-quarter earnings call that the impact of the September fire was “contained to the hot mill and the building structure around it. All other areas of the plant – recycling and casting, cold rolling, automotive finishing, and shipping – were unaffected and production in these areas has continued.”
Novelis has been leveraging external supply agreements and European rolling capacity to mitigate customer disruption, including air-freighting coil.
The facility is the largest producer of automotive alloys in North America and a key supplier to automakers. More than 90% of the site’s projected 2025 flat-rolled product output was dedicated to automotive body sheet and structural sheet, with a small fraction for the beverage can market, according to estimates from CRU Group, AMU’s parent company.
Ford identified the Novelis outage as one of the company’s most significant external headwinds, estimating a $1.5 billion to $2.0 billion hit to adjusted EBIT and a $2.0 billion to $3.0 billion reduction to adjusted free cash flow for the full year. Ford said it expects lost fourth-quarter production of around 90,000-100,000 vehicles, primarily affecting its truck lines.
Novelis’ Oswego location is the company’s first US operation and the company’s largest, wholly owned fabrication facility in North America. Novelis is a subsidiary of Mumbai, India-based Hindalco Industries Limited.
The company has invested about $130 million in the plant, an expansion first announced in 2021 aimed at adding 65,000 metric tons per year (t/yr) of hot mill rolling capacity dedicated to the automotive and specialty markets, and improving finishing capability for sheet. At the beginning of the year, CRU estimated Oswego’s total capacity would reach about 560,000 t/yr in 2025, with part of that increase tied to this long-running upgrade.
After several years of work, Novelis planned to move into Phase 2 of the project, with commissioning scheduled to begin during the company’s 2026 fiscal year, which runs from April 2025 through March 2026.
CRU Group estimates the site accounts for roughly 40% of total aluminum auto body sheet production capacity in the US and Canada.
