Commodities
Rio Tinto to Exclusively Market RevoCast Low-Carbon Aluminium Billet
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Rio Tinto (RIO ) and RevoCast Aluminum Billets Ltd. have entered into a long-term agreement to expand the supply of low-carbon aluminium billet to extrusion customers across North America, Rio Tinto announced on 28 September 2026. Under the agreement, Rio Tinto will exclusively market billet produced at RevoCast’s newly commissioned casting facility in Langley, British Columbia.
The offering will combine Rio Tinto’s low-carbon primary aluminium, produced using hydropower at the company’s Kitimat operations, with recycled aluminium processed by RevoCast. According to the announcement, the combination will give manufacturers access to high-quality, lower-carbon billet produced closer to their operations, while strengthening regional supply chains and supporting greater circularity in British Columbia’s construction sector.
Matt Schicke, Vice President, Aluminium Sales and Marketing at Rio Tinto, said: “By combining Rio Tinto’s low-carbon aluminium production in British Columbia with RevoCast’s recycling and casting capabilities, we can provide North American manufacturers with a reliable supply of high-quality billet produced closer to their operations. This partnership strengthens our ability to help customers increase the recycled and low-carbon content of their products and build more resilient value chains.”
Thomas Martini, President and Chief Executive Officer of RevoCast, said: “Our partnership with Rio Tinto marks an important milestone for RevoCast, bringing together our advanced remelting capabilities with Rio Tinto’s global expertise, market knowledge and reach. Together, we are expanding access to reliable, high-quality, low-carbon billet with recycled content for extrusion customers across North America, while helping strengthen the region’s aluminium supply chain.”
RevoCast’s Langley Casting Facility
RevoCast’s Langley facility was commissioned in August 2026 and has annual production capacity of more than 80,000 tonnes of 6xxx-series aluminium billet, according to the Rio Tinto release. The billet is intended for extrusion applications in construction, transportation, industrial products and consumer goods. The facility uses recycled aluminium and advanced remelting technology designed to maximize energy efficiency and reduce emissions.
RevoCast states that the plant’s annual capacity of more than 80,000 tonnes equates to 176.4 million pounds of aluminium billets, and that the facility serves the West Coast and Pacific Northwest extrusion market. The company produces billets in the 6xxx alloy series in two diameters, 178 mm (7 in) and 203 mm (8 in), with a maximum sellable length of 7.3 m (288 in). RevoCast describes the site as a state-of-the-art remelting facility with best-in-class equipment and industry-leading energy efficiency, and says it significantly reduces carbon emissions while operating with the highest recycled content.
Rio Tinto’s BC Works Operations
The low-carbon primary aluminium in the offering comes from Rio Tinto’s BC Works operation in Kitimat, British Columbia, which comprises a modernised aluminium smelter and the Kemano Powerhouse, a hydropower facility supplied by the Nechako reservoir. According to Rio Tinto’s BC Works operations page, the powerhouse has 896 MW of capacity, and an 80 km transmission line carries power from Kemano to the smelter. The Kitimat site also includes an ice-free deep sea port and a private terminal, and Rio Tinto transports products by ship and rail primarily to customers in Japan, South Korea and the United States.
BC Works opened in 1954 as the world’s largest smelter powered by hydroelectricity. Rio Tinto completed a modernization of the smelter in 2016 at a cost of 6 billion Canadian dollars, installing AP Technology smelting equipment. The company states BC Works now produces twice as much aluminium with half the greenhouse gas emissions, and that the aluminium has one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world.
The Kemano Powerhouse receives water from the Nechako Reservoir via a single tunnel that is more than 70 years old, and Rio Tinto states it remains the largest high-pressure hydropower generation facility in North America. In 2017, Rio Tinto announced a C$600 million investment in a second tunnel at Kemano to keep power supply to the smelter secure; a tunnel boring machine named tl’ughus by the Cheslatta Carrier Nation cut 7.6 kilometres through remote mountain rock over 30 months to complete the route for a 16 kilometre tunnel started in the early 1990s, and the project was completed in May 2022. Rio Tinto states BC Works contributed more than C$660 million to the British Columbia economy in 2025, making it one of the largest single contributors to the province’s manufacturing GDP.
