welcome to bets on the future where we highlight the various career paths and the electrifying Metals World from the vehicle you ride in to the bridge holding it up metals are everywhere why not in your career too I’m Jennifer Betts a Metals industry veteran with almost 20 years experience here to highlight these incredible career paths As Told by the women who are living them today we have a true industry leader joining us please give a warm welcome to Rosa laksamana VP of sustainability for gringus Americas she brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table in regards to the metals industry with the Swedish Heritage of the company Rosa and the team at grancus Americas have achieved remarkable success in carbon reduction through increased recycling get ready for an enlightening conversation about all things in the aluminum World get ready to be inspired by her unique insights thank you so much Rosa for for coming on today yeah absolutely and welcome to Nashville this is kind of the mecca the it City lots happening here and we’re really excited that Israeli came to Nashville here right in our backyard so fantastic for us

and my company during this Americas who’s only about 20 minutes I’m south of here so quick and easy Journey up here to Nashville to meet up with you it’s it’s been fantastic and for those who may not be familiar with what Israel is it’s the Institute of scrap recycling Industries it’s essentially the recycling worlds Association for North America and so we are going to be talking about all the different variety of career paths in the metals industry and this week I’m at a recycling event for that and we also have the VP of sustainability which obviously recycling plays a huge factor in that as well so Rosa thank you so much for coming on yeah absolutely thank you I think recycling is really interesting for us we have understood now that the carbon footprint is really important and with recycling that is a huge Initiative for us so excited to talk about kind of our journey and what we’ve done so far with the recycling World wonderful well I do want to get into your history but for those who are unfamiliar with what grain just America is can you give a brief overview

of what your company does yeah absolutely so we were founded in Sweden um so we’re about 125 years old and we have facilities in Sweden and Poland in China and we have three rolling Mills in the United States so here in the U.S we make uncladed aluminum and we make it for a range of different Industries whether it’s HVAC Automotive it could be flexible packaging it could be building materials array of different customers but in the US we have three rolling facilities where we make this sustainable aluminum for our customer base that’s fantastic so I want to go down a little bit about your history I I come from a finance background and I threw a random career fair in college found the recycling industry how did you find this career path what you know did you go to school for this how did did you know about it before school yeah so that’s a super interesting question um actually have had zero experience um didn’t go to school for it and didn’t really know much about it so growing up my parents immigrated here from Germany um and we kind of lived

off the land and my parents did a lot with Recycling and reusing and you know when you are trying to figure out how you can consolidate and reuse things from a financial standpoint you really use everything that you have so growing up I had a real love for the Earth um people kind of call me a crunchy granola tree hugger because I do love everything outside that’s where you can find me on weekends um but I didn’t really understand anything from a job about that I went to college I got a degree actually an exercise because I love the body and I love just learning more about how you can change your body and what you can do to that and then I spent probably the last 15 years in supply chain working for either private companies or public companies and I love supply chain because it’s never a dull day in that but moving on I was trying to do something that was a little closer to home I was driving pretty far this was pre-covered working for a company that was really pretty far from my house and then I just

stumbled upon gringus and they had a supply chain position open so I did that for the first year working in their supply chain department but then started just taking on a couple of projects here and there and they came to me and said hey do you want to do sustainability and I said I don’t really know what that is and they said you can figure it out so that’s kind of how I’ve landed in this position and so it’s been really exciting over the last year just to see all the things it’s really connected me with everybody in our business all the way down to our customers our suppliers all the different departments I mean it takes a huge amount of people um to move a company in a sustainable Direction and so we have everybody from metal purchasers we have folks who focus on the energy and the efficiencies we have project directors who are looking at making our facilities um anytime we invest and grow them making them more sustainable so it’s a really interesting Mecca of people who surround sustainability but that’s kind of how I fell into it that’s very

interesting I feel like that’s how most people find this this this industry this career path there isn’t a school that you go to for for this there isn’t a specific degree for you know recycling or I I believe there are some more and the sustainable worlds that are coming to fruition but you know when you and I started our career paths that that wasn’t that wasn’t an option and so that’s a that’s a big push of you know why I’m so excited to have you on this podcast to be able to Showcase in the Next Generation that there are completely viable career paths for individuals that match what they love to do on the personal side what they’re passionate about on the personal side that also aligned with being able to support you know a life right financially because obviously at the end of the day you still have to pay bills and um and it’s great that you can match up the two uh especially with you know your passion for you know physical fitness and um the environment and getting outside and enjoying the planet to be able to match that with

your career is it I have to imagine it’s it’s a pretty great feeling for you yeah and it’s that’s absolutely exciting and I think I agree with you 100 um nowadays there is many more doors that you can open we actually have a lot of Engineers that work for us and in my mind I always thought an engineer was somebody who just works on a machine but there’s so many more Engineers out there whether it’s an energy engineer or a process engineer or a digitalization engineer who’s making something more efficient to use less energy so we actually have a lot of engineer positions now that kind of fall within the sustainability initiatives and moves the company forward but I think as we continue to grow as you know companies turn to initiatives to make themselves Greener and more marketable especially because that’s what these consumers want that’s what every consumer wants including myself um looking for something that’s a Greener option and and leaving the planet kind of better than we found it so I think going forward there will be a lot more opportunity needs for folks to be in kind of their

area of expertise and the things that they love personally and kind of combine them into a role a professional role that they can be in for a long time based on what you know now um what would you recommend or suggest for somebody that wants to get into this field how would you suggest they go about doing it from either schooling or networking with individuals or companies to get into this yeah I think nowadays you have you know social media at your fingertips I think you can easily go out there and Google any topic that you’re looking for whether it is Metals industry it could be an array of different things I mean we have a lot of safety folks that work for us as well we have you know somebody who’s in the molten metal specialist position so again I think social media has helped kind of open up that idea that you know what’s there um coming from maybe some small towns you may not understand that there’s companies out there that are global companies and they work in lots of different regions of the world and different states even in the

US so I think Googling kind of what you’re interested in but then I think it’s really what is your passion if if you’re a you know data analyst if you are a projects director if you are an engineer if you are you know really passionate about safety and health safety of of folks I think there’s really lots of different areas of the business that you could work in and so it’s really finding a passion that you love and I think you know working for a global company is always fantastic because you just you’re able to partner with different folks across the world who do things differently than you so there’s different thinking there’s really this kind of tag team of seeing what they’ve done what’s worked um and with us I think you know having our Roots based in Europe it gives us a little bit more insight from a sustainability standpoint of what have you done from an energy perspective and in the US the recycling portion has been much more accessible here for us so what we’ve done with our journey is really a learning for you know our partners in in

China where they don’t have as much recycling in that it’s not really available there so I think um you know for somebody looking in this field whether it is finding a degree that you can do in this or if you’re really just wanting to be in the metals industry is like you know there’s lots of types of metals you could be in aluminum you could be in steel you could be in Copper there’s so many types and it’s really exciting even speaking with some of our technical folks when they start talking about the grains of aluminum under a microscope um I I start to kind of lose focus but then they show me some pictures and it is so interesting looking at you know what this looks like and I would have never known I mean the first time I stood in front of a furnace and they opened the door up I thought I was standing in front of a son but it was so neat it was so interesting because the the day-to-day consumer doesn’t see that right you pick up your iPhone you don’t realize that half of that

is aluminum you don’t know where it comes from and then the first time you see it it like opens up this whole new world of what’s going on out there from you know Upstream of you purchasing whatever it is that you’re buying and now it’s a AC unit a car airpods whatever it may be absolutely people don’t realize that the car that they drive is probably their former washer and dryer or uh you know the the beverage container that they’re they’re using the water bottle right that’s probably part of that depending on where they buy it which country it’s from uh is recycled from something else that they had already used and put into you know the blue bin if you will when I joined this industry I did it very naively I looked at it as great they’re going to give me a company car they’re going to give me an expense account and I gotta go travel the country and I sounds great right 22 year old sounds fantastic versus all my friends were you know behind desks and cubicles and you know I’m going out visiting people’s meeting in person and

going to yards I thought it was just you put your recyclables in the blue band at the end of your driveway and then poof it magically turns into something new I had no idea that there was this whole commodity trading World kind of and the blue bin is such a small fraction of what the recycling World actually is the majority of what we recycle especially in the United States since we’re very a scrap rich country is industrial recycling it’s coming from the automotive industry that you know every time that they Stamp Out a coat of a car or a car park there’s residual metal left behind that they’re not going to descend to the landfill that’s value there is a financial benefit to taking that material and reusing it and so it’s fantastic to see careers that exist that help the planet but also are a financial benefit to companies to be able to get a little bit of their their raw material costs back in the form of recycled materials yeah I think what we have learned recently you know talking with more and more of our customers about kind of what they’re

looking for what their Journey what their targets are is they find it important to see if they can get their scrap back into their own product so really what we call kind of closing the loop with them so we purchase scrap we purchased some prime as well and then we create the product for them we send it to them they use it stamp it put it in their product and whatever scrap that they have from that they sell back to us and then we re-melt it and just kind of continue closing the sleep so it really is interesting when you say you know that the can that you’re holding or the hood of a car whatever it may be it really is it could have been you you know somebody else’s refrigerant could have been your refrigerator uh and now it’s the car door that you drive so it really is kind of this closing the loop on continuing to repurpose and reuse because for us we always say like aluminum is infinitely recyclable like continuously recycling that so that you don’t have to have more of that taken out of the Earth’s

crust and turned into aluminum so for us really increasing the amount and then working with our customers to say hey can we change how much prime we put in there so we can lower the carbon footprint because it is very um carbon intensive right to take the bauxite out of the ground and turn that into aluminum and our customers they are so inquisitive and they’re all starting this sustainability journey I think we can all attest to that seeing how many sustainable jobs are out there but from a recycling perspective they’re interested in can they get their own scrap back into their own product and say Hey listen you know in this product our own scrap in here has been put in you know tenfold times that’s really great to hear that there are companies out there that are recognizing that they have the opportunity to reuse what they’re generating the extras that they’re generating that maybe don’t fit necessarily into whatever mold there’s a little bit extra whatever the product process is that produces it it’s fantastic to see that that’s being thought about now because in the past it seems like you know

decades ago I would say not as much of a factor it was kind of an afterthought probably for some of these companies but now they have the opportunity to say no we’re trying to make sure that we’re not going to produce any waste in any of the ways that we do produce we’re going to make sure that we can reuse it somehow and so it’s it’s obviously happening in Europe it’s happening here in the United States and some other countries around the world and so it’s really great to see the global Community trying to come together and really address these issues but it’s also a financial benefit for for these companies as well yeah I would agree I think even now we’ve started to explore you know post-consumer scrap because that’s something that’s a little more difficult um with you know post-industrial it’s a little bit easier you don’t have all the use out of whatever product you’re trying to recycle um but post-consumer is much more difficult and I think you know you touched on it earlier kind of the blue bin and throwing it in there but then what

happens with it does it need to be sorted um I think for me you know being in this industry of aluminum now over the last several years I’ve really learned it’s not just a type of aluminum there’s lots of different what we call Alloys in there and not everybody uses the same Alloys every customer is different so you’ve got to be able to create these Alloys and then stay in those specs so what happens if it’s you know post-consumer what is in there that is deterring you from reusing it so is it a different alloy is it a different chemical makeup does it have something on there that you can’t use has it been painted is there a plastic on it how do you take take that and really separate these materials that have been bonded together and I think about that from like a you know flexible packaging like a Capri Sun so how do you pull that aluminum in that plastic apart and are there Technologies around that who’s looking at that is that something you know that a customer is trying to focus on or is there a committee so

that I think is really something new in the U.S is trying to figure that out because that is becoming increasingly more important especially in the US where everything for us is so convenient right we want everything kind of in a to-go box and quick and fast and and then how do we reuse that instead of just tossing it away absolutely the for for the everyday person that maybe is not familiar with some of the terms that you threw out there the aluminum World essentially has a different alloy so it’s the same metal but it has a different uh makeup with different elements in there right so there might be a little bit higher copper a little bit more silicon something along those lines to basically make it up so the aluminum that goes into manufacturing and airplane is going to be different than the aluminum that goes into an aluminum beverage can which for a fun fact there’s two Alloys that are in the aluminum beverage can because you need you have you know strong flexible walls but then you need a rigid top so what happens when you take that aluminum

can from the blue Banner from wherever that somebody you know as a post consumer used it maybe there’s a little bit of liquid still in there right maybe it got wrapped with a little bit of plastic on the outside to make it really beautiful design for whichever company was selling it but then how do you deal with that when it needs to come back into the furnace because for those that don’t know uh moisture uh does not play nice with aluminum it’s very dangerous it can cause really reactive explosions to be honest and so we want to make sure that part of our sustainability movement and especially in the United States is also to make sure that we’re safe for individuals so I’m sure you probably have a lot of safety measures that go into play there are I mean imagining strict guidelines in terms of what you can purchase and how it shows up to your facilities as well yeah that’s so true I mean safety is you know our number one priority um surrounding everything not just the purchase of what type of aluminum we purchase or what type of scrap we’re

bringing in because again you talked about it the water water there I mean it expands 1700 times from the size of a marble to a soccer ball really and that does that creates huge explosions I’ve seen videos even out there you know when we talk about safety of molten metal and it is incredible to see what just such a small drop of water can do so safety is really high on our list when we’re looking at what types of scrap we can purchase so we try to tend to steer away from like tubes that are folded because there could be water in there I’m looking at Technologies to maybe even heat that up so that you kind of are trying out any heat in there that or any water really that’s in left in the scrap and then having scrap storage is so that it’s not out in the weather so there’s a lot of focus around scrap and the safety of purchasing it but even within our facilities I mean when you walk through some of our facilities like you can see how the priority on safety and the focus around that is

from everything that folks are wearing from a PPE right the personal protection equipment that you’re wearing everything from fireproofing you know gloves and and the shields that you’re wearing Ever every jacket that you have on the boots um making it a safety priority around them because you’re going to have this at some point uh knock on wood you know hopefully it’s not a fatality when it happens but it just makes us look at our processes and procedures and to say hey this is something that we’ve identified as a risk we need to take this risk down and for us maybe it’s not buying folded tubes that could have water in there but I think safety is really important when it comes to any of the metals that you’re working with you have not only sharp edges you have molten metal that’s out there and what we always tell when we have visitors that come in right aluminum looks the same whether it’s hot or cold don’t touch anything keep your hands in your pocket yes absolutely I’ve worked at numerous dmls and uh toward several aluminum secondaries and smelters in in my day and

you can’t describe the heat that comes off of the furnace and then also when the finished product is Cooling it looks the same right but then if you get close enough you can feel the heat and you can even see you know the the waves of heat coming off of it it’s really quite incredible what we’re able to do as as humans to be able to essentially manipulate these metals that come out of the the Earth’s crust into usable products for our everyday lives but the process to get them there is is quite intensive yeah absolutely I actually just visited a um a scrap recycling um kind of a rotary furnace and to see what they’re doing in these rotary furnaces you know or spinning with this molten metal in there and again it’s like standing in front of the sun I always go back to that um and everybody’s walking around with so many layers of clothes on they look like the kid from The Christmas Story there with the jackets on but that’s such a safety precaution and that’s important because if if we don’t have folks that are working in this

industry um because it’s not a safe aspect then we can’t move forward by making products that are necessary for everyday life so the safety of that molten aluminum or molten metal really in any facility really in the safety around the people is just such a high priority as a personal note I do feel that molten aluminum is probably one of the prettiest metals that are out there it’s it’s it almost looks like it’s silver yeah as it goes across it shimmers it’s it’s really beautiful uh to see in person but it’s something that you absolutely have to respect and realize that it it’s it’s something that could be quite dangerous in that that form so it’s a wonderful year that companies like Gringos America’s is taking the necessary precautions having the safety measures in place to make sure that we can have a healthy sustainable movement going in these manufacturers so that this can continue to be able to to use the world’s resources efficiently yeah absolutely um when I think about that molten metal when I see it even I think about folks ask me you know like what do you do for

work and trying to explain to them what molten metal looks like I always say like have you seen Terminator where he just lowers himself down into that fat but it is it is really pretty I’ve seen on social media even some folks who do these at-home things which absolutely nobody should be doing but they’re pouring molten aluminum kind of in those Orbeez yep on those water beads and they pour it down in there and it makes me I mean just cringe under my skin to see them doing that because again you’re mixing water and molten aluminum that is you know 17 1800 degrees Fahrenheit which is a complete No-No it it I’ve seen very similar videos and it they’re fascinating to watch but my heart is racing of is this gonna is this gonna be a video that goes viral because something not great happens at the end yeah um what are you working on currently what are you working on at this moment is there something that you’re looking ahead to to help increase the sustainable movement at gringas Americas is there something that you would like to to share on

that front yeah I think on the sustainability sustainability Forefront um the biggest thing for us is really working on reducing our carbon footprint and the easiest way for us to do that is by increasing our recycled content so we capture all of our Scopes so we really are capturing this Cradle to to gate footprint all the way Upstream right from our suppliers and then looking at how can we reduce that so we focus on the scope one and scope two in the U.S we have natural gas much more readily available so we utilize that for a lot of our equipment but then we purchased the electricity and we’ve actually signed two solar agreements now with two of our facilities for renewable solar for the electricity so that’s a great win for us over the last year and then on really the total carbon footprint we’ve reduced that in the last um several years by about 33 since we’ve started measuring that and for us we’ve been able to achieve that by increasing our scrap we recognize that scrap has such a small carbon footprint versus primary so we’ve increased that goodness I think

last year we ended at about 48 so half of all the metal that we purchased to make our products is um recycled it’s RSI it’s recycled scrap it’s closed loop that we talked about earlier from our customers so we have increased that and our aspirations are hopefully by 2030 to bring that even lower to really say that we’ve reduced it by almost half since our Baseline and then we did submit our science-based Target initiative so I’m having those aspirations to be at Net Zero by 2040. wow that’s incredibly impressive I I really appreciate what you’re doing the the sustainable movement is is here it’s here in manufacturing and it’s really something that company companies can use to their advantage as well as not just having a wonderful benefit for the environment overall so it’s really wonderful to hear that gringas America is is really making that a priority yeah I think we’ve started to see it and hear the chatter around it you know we said when sustainability kind of takes root with companies I think it’s going to be really quick it’s going to be this kind of landslide that happens and

everybody’s going to be running towards these goals and we’ve started to see it we’ve had you know customers come to us and ask us about our journey and what are we doing and you know how did we get into this and how do we report it and you know what are we capturing so it’s been really interesting to see and it’s really kind of snowballed over I would say probably the last two years from the time I kind of took the role and started looking at all of these factors until now it has really been a snowball they’re asking so many questions and we continue to move down the path of you know making our operations more efficient and we achieved our ASI certification both on our own operations and Upstream last year so that was a great win for us so now we can say that really we have three facilities in the U.S that follow you know the guidelines to say you’re doing the things that are um sustainable for the environment for your products and really for your own operations including what are we doing for our people because it’s

important that sustainability covers not only just the environment and the products that we make but it covers you know the things that we do for safety for um just having having diversity in our Workforce that’s important those are measurements that we measure because it’s important I mean we even measure how many women that we have still because that is also important for us that we have more folks in this industry and that we continue to do good things because the the younger generation they care about this and so when we hire um folks that are younger that that’s one of the things that they’ve looked at and they’ve researched you and they say you know we see that you are um sustainable and you’re moving in that direction and we want to work for a company that’s doing the same thing so it is important to the younger generation I think sometimes when we talk with uh some folks that have been raised in this industry um they don’t necessarily see all the benefits but I think that just takes education because if you would have told somebody I think 60 years ago that

you know we would have been having podcasts in today’s world that you can talk to somebody on the other side of the world they would have laughed at us right because that technology just wasn’t there so I think the older generation is coming around as they get more educated as to why we’re doing it why is it important um you know what difference is it going to make for them and um for new technologies new customers the Next Generation coming around I think they really come around to that absolutely well I hope that this podcast this particular episode lands uh you know in their inbox uh online or whatever social media channel that they’re following out there they’ll be it will be forwarded to them by their you know their teenager that’s in high school that’s how they’ll hear about it exactly exactly it’s it’s been such a pleasure having you on here today it’s really been educational it’s been wonderful to hear about your experience how you got into it what grandkids America is is doing on the sustainable front so I really appreciate you Rosa the VP of sustainability for gringus America’s

thank you so much for for joining us today absolutely thanks so much Jennifer