To find out more about the company's beginnings, its journey up until this moment, but also the opportunities and the challenges of recycling metals, we talked to Constantin Apostol, the CEO of As Metal.

Over 30 years of manufacturing and recycling metals

As Metal was founded back in 1993 and 7 years later, in 2000, the company purchased with the help of a partner from Italy the current production site, located in Southern Bucharest on an old industrial platform. One year after that moment, the company started to collect and transform metal waste or simply said, to recycle the materials available in the economy.

"The year 2003 was a point of reference in our activity for recycling aluminum waste with the help of hydro and pyrometallurgy. In 2009, we partnered with an Italian company near Bergamo, which also specializes in recycling aluminum waste and thus, we gained European expertise on recycling metals", Constantin Apostol explained for Green Start-Up.

Constantin, the CEO of the company and a graduate of the Metallurgy Faculty from Bucharest's Polytechnic Institute, said that the choice to work in the metal industry was an obvious continuation of his studies.

32 years from its founding, As Metal counts 106 employees, and the annual production of aluminum amounts to around 20.000 tons, with the entire production being ensured by the recycled of metal waste.

"In other words, our company is a facility for recycling aluminum waste", As Metal officials added.

The evolution of As Metal in an ever-changing metal market

Like any other industry, metal manufacturing went through a number of changes over time, as an evolution of technology, as well as the production methodologies. But for As Metal, things were even more complicated, as the company was born just a few years after Romania made the transition from communism to a free market.

Constantin Apostol also mentions the technological advancements that took place since the year 2000 and until this very moment, changes that led to better and more efficient regulations, supported by a stricter European framework for environment protection and circular economy.

Climate change and the need to reduce the carbon footprint in all industries was a dramatic shift in the metal manufacturing sector, thus players on this market were asked to increase the share of recycled materials used for manufacturing, in exchange for the virgin ore.

"During this time, the recycling of metals, especially aluminum, was even more relevant and the infrastructure improved, as well, with the companies investing in advanced manufacturing and recycling technologies", the CEO of the company added.

The recycling of metals, beneficial for the planet

One thing is known in the metal manufacturing industry, which can be applied to other industries, as well, and that's the fact that using recycling materials is better than using virgin materials.

The main product manufactured by As Metal is aluminum alloy, which is then used as raw material by the industries that are manufacturing large-consumption goods, such as automotive, aerospace and telecommunications.

Recycling metals brings important benefits for the environment, but also for the company that undertakes this process, but there are some challenges associated with it. for As Metal, using recycled materials reduces the dependency on natural resources, while the energy consumption associated with the manufacturing of existing materials is up to 95% lower than that required for the processing of raw ore.

At the same time, the emissions associated with the production decrease, as well, but this is also where the metal manufacturing industry faces its first challenge and will continue to face it for a long time. The European and global targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the evolution of the technologies made for reducing residual waste from production are two of the challenges metal-making companies around the world need to address.

Constantin told us that current regulations require a reduction for CO2e emissions resulted after the production of one ton of aluminum made from virgin ore from 16.5 tons of CO2e to 0.5 tons of CO2e by 2050. At the same time, for aluminum alloys made from recycled materials, which is the process employed by As Metal, the emissions must drop from 0.7 tons of CO2e emissions to 0.1 tons by the same year.

An important component for reaching the sustainability objectives within an industry is the implementation of technology and improving the sorting / separation processes, which currently use X rays and lasers. Together with AI algorithms, these technologies have an efficiency to sort / separate of around 97-98%, according to As Metal representatives.

Also, the furnaces used for melting and purifying aluminum metal waste benefited from technological improvements, so they are more energy efficient and offer better performance compared to models released 10-15 years before them.

"European frameworks regarding industrial emissions imposed the aluminum manufacturing industry to equip itself with high-performance capture devices for emissions, whether we're talking about powders or the chemical composition of the gases burned after the melting and manufacturing processes."

As Metal's journey towards a more sustainable way of manufacturing metals

The sustainable manufacturing of aluminum materials wasn't always easy to do at As Metal, but the company tried during its existence to adopt next generation technologies in order to lower its impact on the environment.

The past ten years in particular were an important moment for As Metal, as the support offered by banks and the efforts of the shareholders facilitated important investments for the purchase of high-performance technologies for the recycling of aluminum. Besides the initial difficulty to keep up with the technological advancements and the regulations imposed by lawmakers, As Metal faces challenges regarding the entire value chain. This includes collecting, preprocessing, the transport, storage and recycling itself.

The company measures its carbon footprint for the Scope 1 and 2 of its activity since 2019 and starting this year, the Romanian company was certified by Ecovadis for its environment actions. At the same time, the company publishes an annual sustainability report starting 2022 to evaluate its environment performance, as well as the evolution of the sustainable metal-manufacturing processes.

To have an even lower impact on the planet, the company established a plan for decarbonization, with 2021 being the point of reference regarding the reduction of emissions, and the internal production of renewable energy are part of this strategy.

As Metal's plan for a more sustainable production in 2025

As Metal continues its mission to contribute to a cleaner environment and the company announced new sustainability measures for this year. Thus, we found out from Constantin that "at the beginning of this year, As Metal finished the process of obtaining Gold Standard carbon certificates (VER - voluntary emission reduction) through a project called "Aluminum Recycling - a solution to reduce CO2" and the company was approved the issue of 108.777 certificates."

These certificates, which are in fact carbon credits, can be purchased by companies or customers that want to lower their carbon footprint, but which don't currently have the required measures to do so.

The revenue obtained from the sale of these carbon credits will be reinvested in research projects for the development of more sustainable recycling technologies, as well as for the implementation of other sustainability efforts that will reduce the impact on the environment at As Metal.