The anodizing plant in three shifts creates 60 new jobs. In Rackwitz, Hydro now employs more than 260 of the 6,000 or so employees in Germany in the press shop and the recycling foundry next door.

Precisely because anodizing makes aluminum so robust, more and more customers are asking for anodized profiles, especially for sophisticated solar modules and systems, as well as superstructures for commercial vehicles and for architecture. So far, Hydro had to have profiles manufactured in Rackwitz treated further by external service providers.

"In both main markets, solar and transport, aluminum fulfills a beneficial function: We help to make renewable energy, here solar power, robustly available. We also make mobility significantly easier - and our material is renewable itself, over and over again, "emphasized Group Executive Board member Hans-Joachim Kock at the inauguration with the Mayor of Manfred Fritzang in Rackwitz and Ulrich Fiedler, the first deputy of the North Saxon District Office.

The new system anodizes up to 4 million square meters of durable and fully recyclable aluminum profiles every year. The Hydro Aluminum Extrusion Germany unit, along with the already existing 2.5 million square meters of anodizing production at the Uphusen plant, has become the largest European supplier of anodized aluminum profiles. The new company is already running four shifts in seven days a week, said Clemens Metzler, Managing Director of Hydro Aluminum Extrusion Deutschland GmbH.