Automotive Trucks information on net.

Orders for approximately 1.2 million aluminum bumper beams annually for new and redesigned North American built family vehicles due out between 2003 and 2005 have been booked by Hydro Automotive Structures Inc., Holland, Mich., the company said.

More than half of the new business will involve applications on vehicles, classified as light-duty trucks, Craig Keifer, vice president of business development, said in an interview.

The bumper beams will be extruded by Hydro Automotive using 6082 and 7000-series alloys, with 6082 accounting for most of the applications, he said.

"It appears that, among other things, the automakers want to make some significant reductions in the weights of their light-duty trucks for better fuel economy and emissions performance. And using aluminum-intensive bumper systems will help them do that," Keifer said. Sport utility vehicles (SUVs), pickups, vans and. many crossover vehicles are classified as trucks.

He declined to say how much aluminum is likely to be consumed annually in the new bumper beams, but industry sources estimated that 1.2, million units for trucks and cars, with trucks getting more than half of the applications, will probably contain 13 million pounds or more of the light metal.

Hydro Automotive gets much of its metal from the Goldendale, Wash., smelter of Golden North west Aluminum Co. on a tolling basis, along with some metal from Alcan Aluminum Ltd., Montreal. Hydro Automotive is a unit of Norwegian industrial giant Norsk Hydro ASA, which has an interest in Golden Northwest.

Keifer said several automakers, including General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., and DaimlerChrysler AG, will use the light-alloy bumper beams in the new applications, but he said he is not at liberty to identify the vehicles involved.

Keifer's company is one of the world's biggest manufacturers of aluminum beams, and is currently making them for such vehicles as the Cadillac Deville, Buick Park Avenue and LeSabre, Oldsmobile Aurora and Pontiac Bonneville (AMM, Feb. 25, 1999, and Dec. 9, 1998).

Keifer did say, however, that in some of the new applications, both the front and rear bumpers have been specified in aluminum, whereas in others only the front or rear beams--but not both-- will be aluminum. It is not uncommon for anautomaker to split the bumper beam applications on the same vehicle between steel and aluminum depending on the weight target for that car or truck.

The fact that Hydro Automotive has booked such a sizeable amount of new business seems to indicate that demand for aluminum bumpers is not going to decline dramatically, in spite of recent predictions to the contrary in domestic steel industry studies (AMM, June 30). It appears, in fact, to indicate a still-strong interest in aluminum as a bumper material for some vehicles.

There is no argument that steel dominates the automotive bumper market and that aluminum and plastic account for a relatively minor share on a unit-content (weight) basis. Plastics are used mostly in bumper fascias, and the principal application for aluminum is the structural beams. However, some bumper face bars also are aluminum.