Dec 4 2007
Novelis today formally opened its new Technology and Innovation Centre, located at the company's Göttingen plant in Lower Saxony. The new facility, one of three such laboratories operated by Novelis in Europe, will provide specialist research and development support for customers and other Novelis plants across Europe. The main areas of expertise of the Göttingen centre lie in the development of aluminium sheet products for the lithographic printing, drink and food can markets as well as pre-painted aluminium sheet for other end-uses. Similar centres in Luxembourg and Switzerland serve a variety of markets including automotive and foil.
The opening was attended by a range of customers and local stakeholders who toured the state-of-the-art facilities and viewed a number of exciting product innovations. Göttingen mayor, Mr Wolfgang Meyer, officially opened the centre.
The exterior of the new centre gives a clue as to what lies within and acts as a “shopfront” for some of the company's latest architectural innovations. Products currently on show include Novelis' luminous aluminium sheet product, LuminalTM, which can be seen glowing gently at night at the entrance to the Innovation Centre.
Commenting on the choice of the Göttingen plant as the location for this new investment, Stefan Erdmann, general manager of Novelis Göttingen said: “It makes a lot of sense to have our R&D located in the plant as our scientists are able to work closely with the sales teams, our customers and our European production facilities. Innovation is fundamental to the continued success and competitiveness of Novelis.”
Thomas Wuttke, manager of the Technology and Innovation Centre, added: “Our vision for the new centre is to bring relevant, value-creating projects to our customers more quickly than we have ever been able to do before. We need to be ahead of the pack to remain competitive and we are very excited about the great potential we have created with the opening of this R&D centre.”
The specialist equipment in the new facility includes a “coil to coil” pilot rolling mill, which enables product ideas to be developed extremely quickly.
The Göttingen Technology and Innovation Centre is part of Novelis global technology network, which includes complementary technology centres in Sierre (Switzerland), Dudelange (Luxembourg), Kingston (Canada), Aurora (USA) and Ulsan (South Korea).