Sortera Alloys, Inc., a Fort Wayne, Indiana-based. Developer and manufacturer of sorting method developed to recycled metals rebounded from end-of-life products. The company’s system sorts metal by its type and design through a mixture of X-ray fluorescence and optical sensor fusion, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning image processing, enabling companies to sort metal alloys and make valuable feedstocks for domestic manufacturing.
Sortera was funded $10 million led by Assembly Ventures with additional funding from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, other strategic angel investors, and Novelis. The new financing is intended to use in Producing High-Purity Recycled Alloys that Reduce CO₂ Emissions and Help Customers Achieve Circular Production Goals—also dedicated to providing a solution for end-of-life circular recycling in the aluminum industry.
The upgraded metals can then be recycled into the highest value applications ranging from automotive cast and flat-rolled products to the building, construction, and aerospace materials extrusions. In addition, the company’s low-cost, scalable production process enables customers to reduce their CO₂ footprint and achieve sustainability and circular production goals since recycled aluminum requires roughly 95% less energy to produce than aluminum produced from virgin raw materials.
Chris Thomas, the co-founder at Assembly Ventures, commented that automotive and manufacturing companies worldwide have been working to implement circular supply chains for decades. Sortera is poise to power efficiencies in industrial and manufacturing supply chains and creates fundamental circularity of manufacturing inputs across the Western world.
The budget follows a robust partnership with Novelis that will see Sortera provide high-quality, recycled alloy emanated from automotive junk to Novelis, who will remanufacture the material into high recycled content aluminum sheet for the automotive industry.
Sortera operates from a 10-acre production facility with plans to expand through the end of 2022. The company’s proprietary method retrieves and repurposes materials once destined for landfills or to be recycled as low-quality composite products.
Derek Prichett, Senior Vice President at Novelis, said the partnership with Sortera will allow Novelis to increase further the recycled content in our products, particularly our automotive materials. This will enable them to meet their ambitious goals of reducing our carbon footprint and help their customers achieve their sustainability objectives.
By: K. Tagura
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