What was already a massive, 10-year-in-the-making local investment in Baldwin County recently became the largest capital investment in the coastal Alabama county to date.

Novelis, an aluminum solutions provider and the world leader in aluminum rolling and recycling, updated its projection from the plant it is building at the former South Alabama Megasite in Bay Minette from $2.5 billion to $4.1 billion, according to the company in its third quarter fiscal year 2024 report.

The plant will be the first fully integrated aluminum mill built in the United States in 40 years and will be primarily powered by renewable energy, use recycled water and be a zero-waste facility. When announced in 2022, it was the largest project in company history.

"We are building this plant not just for today, but for the next 40 years and beyond," said Steve Fisher, president and CEO, Novelis Inc., in a news release overviewing the company's third-quarter 2024 results. "Bay Minette will be a true plant of the future, combining our decades of experience with the latest technology to improve safety, efficiency and the sustainability of our products, while also providing the ability to double future capacity in a cost-effective manner. With customer contracts for beverage packaging already signed and automotive contracting proceeding as planned, we remain confident in the double-digit return of this historic investment."

The new projection was made with a "high level of project engineering complete and all key equipment and the majority of materials contracted."

When ground was broken in 2022, the plant was expected to create approximately $6.5 billion in total economic output and 900 indirect jobs in addition to the 1,000 direct jobs at the 3,000 site, anticipating the ability to initially produce 600 kilotonnes of finished goods for the beverage packaging and automotive markets in North America.

Already at that time, Lee Lawson, director of the Baldwin County Economic Development Alliance, had an increase in investment projections in sight.

Lawson was quoted in a May 2022 article in Gulf Coast Media as saying, "The investment that they're going to make and what we've seen from them as a company, they're going to make continuous investments, and so we expect the $2.5 billion is what they're announcing today. We fully expect it to be $3 billion, $3.5 billion, on and on, just with the way they're designing the site for maximum capacity, saying the initial footprint's going to be 1,000 acres, but it's going to grow over time, and they want to grow into the remainder of the site. We know that this is a first huge generational investment, but it's only going to grow."

With the third-quarter financial report, the company now projects the plant to come online in the second half of 2026.