Now has two companies to create stronger aluminum

Braidy Industries says its rolling aluminum mill in Greenup, Kentucky is still on track to begin operations in 2021.

The company has spent $15.7 million so far to purchase land in the EastPark industrial park near Greenup, Kentucky, for design and engineering plans for the mill, to get needed permits and other governmental approvals; site preparation work and setting up utilities. Kentucky Power plans to perform $33 million in site preparation work in mid-2019 and has agreed to a favorable, fixed which is 50 percent lower than that paid by competitors.

In its offering update, Braidy Industries said it “is raising equity through a traditional private placement targeted at large, sophisticated institutional investors (up to approximately $500 million) side by side with a smaller exempt offering (up to $1.07 million) which allows Main Street investors to invest in a transaction to which they would not otherwise have access.” Braidy Industries said it would continue crowd funding until March 31.

The Kentucky legislature approved a $15 million investment in Braidy Industries in 2017.
When it completed, 45 acres of the factory will be under roof and the mill will be producing nearly 300,000 tons of milled aluminum for use in the automotive, airline, and defense industries.

The mill will employ about 700 people in a high tech environment with robots and artificial technology in a factory with $580 million of new equipment.

The two-year training course for jobs at Braidy Industries, called Advanced Integrated Technology, began this week at Ashland Community and Technical College.

Braidy CEO Craig Bouchard has said that those who complete the course and an internship and stay drug free will get jobs that has an annual salary and benefits around $65,000.

The company has said that it has already presold two years of its lightweight aluminum to companies in the auto industry and that they are in talks with a number of companies.

Bouchard has said the company looked at 24 different sites to build their mill and chose Greenup because it is located within 24 hours of half of the automotive-making facilities in the U.S. and it has the best people. The site offers easy access to U.S. 64 and U.S. 23. And there is railroad access just a few miles down the Industrial Parkway at Wurtland, Kentucky.

“Which means in one day, we can ship to Ford, GM, BMW, Toyota. We can deliver to them in the morning, fill up the truck with scrap and that scrap will be back in our furnace that night,” he said. “That is the perfect storm of logistics. And that can only happen here.”

The company says it will be able to produce offer a broad array of aluminum roll and sheet, including 200,000 tons of series 6,000 auto body sheet, 100,000 tons of series 5,000 sheet and 70,000 tons of series 7,000 aerospace plate annually.

Braidy Industries has purchased two companies that deal with making aluminum stronger.

In March, Braidy Industries spent $75 million and acquired Veolxint, a Massachusetts-based company that developed a process to make aluminum products lighter and stronger.

And in October, Braidy Industries acquired NanoAl LLC, a company that uses nanocrystalline strengthening technology to sheet aluminum.

Brouchard believes the technology has the potential to significantly enhance the specific strength of aluminum to be produced by its Braidy Atlas mill, creating a competitive advantage within the automotive and aerospace OEM marketplace.

“We believe NanoAl’s innovative approach will enable sheet aluminum 20 percent stronger than conventional grades, while maintaining lower cost. The technology also applies to powder metallurgy, including 3D printing applications, allowing additional synergies between the Braidy Atlas mill and Veloxint,” said Veloxint Chief Executive and Chief Technology Officer of Braidy, Dr. Alan Lund. “This is another exciting step towards our goal of rebuilding Appalachia with cutting edge technology focused on lightweighting solutions.”