Recycling
in the name of conserving resources has been part of the
business portfolio at Mitsubishi Materials for more than
a quarter-century. The company and Mitsubishi Aluminum have
strengthened and broadened their commitment to recycling
over the years. Most notably, Mitsubishi Materials, a leading
supplier of aluminum cans, is working to recover as many
aluminum cans as it manufactures and recycle them in their
entirety into new aluminum cans.
Mitsubishi Materials makes about 4 billion
aluminum cans a year. It uses about 70,000 tons of aluminum
in those cans, and it secures about 70% of that aluminum
through recycling. The new recycling plant, which is at
a Mitsubishi Materials factory near Mt. Fuji, will help
raise that percentage further.
Raw material accounts for about one-half
the cost of an aluminum can in Japan. So lowering the cost
of material is a crucial factor in maintaining competitiveness.
The integrated recycling plant lowers costs by eliminating
the need for transporting material among different plants
for different processing. It even handles the final processing
stage of mixing in additives to adjust the precise composition
of the can stocks. |
 |
 All
the cans come together... |
 |
| Pass
through a kiln... |
 |
| And
become an aluminum slab en route to becoming cans
again. |
|
