One Year In: Golden Aluminum and SMS Group Talk Nexcast® at ALUMINIUM 2026

By Jeff Frim, President & CEO, Golden Aluminum

This month I joined Markus Fischer of SMS group on stage at ALUMINIUM 2026 in Düsseldorf. Our topic is one I could talk about all day: the first year of Nexcast® at our plant in Fort Lupton, Colorado.

Golden Aluminum ran continuous block-casting technology for more than 40 years, so we knew exactly what it did well and where it fell short. Nexcast was never about walking away from that experience. It was about combining our operating know-how with SMS group’s engineering to build the next generation of block caster.

No more trade-offs

For decades, our industry has had to pick a lane. DC casting handles demanding alloys but needs enormous amounts of space, energy and investment. Continuous casting is leaner but has mostly been limited to commodity grades. Nexcast® eliminated that trade-off. Its moving mold of copper blocks gives it the precision to cast high-value alloys, with all the efficiency of a continuous route.

From day one to year one

Replacing a caster means replacing the heart of the plant, so we planned carefully. Our team and SMS group took out the old caster and installed the new one in two weeks. We were back in production four weeks after the work began. As Aluminium International Today put it in their recent article, “All mechanical and automation systems, including the interfaces to existing equipment, operated reliably from the first day.”

Since then we’ve set production records and running extended casting campaigns and changing alloys on the fly. We’ve also seen a tremendous reduction in casting defects resulting in higher yield and more downstream throughput. Best of all, our operators have developed a real confidence in the equipment.

Good for business, good for the planet

What I find compelling is that the sustainability benefits and the economic benefits largely come from the same place: a shorter route from liquid metal to coil. A new Nexcast line is about 55 meters long, while a conventional route can stretch past 550 meters. Nexcast fully supports extremely high use of end-of-life scrap along with significant reductions in carbon intensity and process-water use.

What’s next

We expect Nexcast at our Fort Lupton, Colorado location to increase our finished-product output by 25% by 2028 while maintaining extra capacity to produce test coils as we explore new markets and support future users of Nexcast. Each product still has to earn its qualification with customers, but that opens up a much larger opportunity over traditional continuous casting options.

And we’re not keeping it to ourselves,we’re making this technology available to select partners.
So if you’re interested in exploring what Nexcast® could do for your operation, feel free to reach out. To simply learn more about it, visit our site -> goldenaluminum.com/nexcast.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone that has made this project possible. That includes our team in Fort Lupton, our partners at SMS group, and the customers who’ve trusted us along the way. We truly couldn’t have done it without you. It’s been an exciting ride, and we’re just getting started.

Jeff Frim

President & CEO, Golden Aluminum