State Minister for Economic Affairs Andreas Pinkwart visits TRIMET

Minister Pinkwart emphasized that the costs of the energy transition should not jeopardize the industry’s competitiveness, and praised TRIMET’s efforts to make the aluminium electrolysis process more flexible. “The project is an outstanding and innovative solution from North Rhine-Westphalia’s energy-intensive industry towards the success of the energy transition,” said Pinkwart.
Iffert stressed the importance of the raw materials industry for North Rhine-Westphalia as a business location: “Aluminium production forms the basis for many areas of industrial value creation. As a family business, we would like to secure both our production sites and our employees’ jobs over the long term. In ensuring that the manufacturing process is more flexible, we are making an important contribution to restructuring the energy supply and thus strengthening this industrial location.”
TRIMET has developed a process that can adapt energy-intensive aluminium production to a fluctuating power supply from wind and solar energy, thereby acting as a large energy storage facility. The company is currently reconfiguring one of three production lines in its Essen aluminium smelter to test the new process on an industrial scale.