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An aluminum-rolling plant that supplies Ford Motor and other automakers restarted production, nine months after a fire caused a supply crisis for the car industry.
The Novelis plant in upstate New York is the largest domestic supplier of aluminum sheet for the U.S. automotive industry, the WSJ’s Bob Tita writes. It serves about a dozen companies, including Ford, General Motors, Jeep and Ram parent Stellantis, as well as foreign automakers with U.S. production facilities.
A fire at the plant in September idled the rolling line where aluminum sheet is produced. Another fire in November caused additional damage to the rolling equipment and plant building. The thin aluminum sheets produced at the plant are later stamped into fenders, hoods and other exterior vehicle parts.
The outage was particularly disruptive for Ford, which uses aluminum for the body of the F-150 pickup. The subsequent shortage of aluminum reduced Ford’s inventories of trucks at its dealers going into summer, typically a busy time for new auto sales.
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