We have exciting news to share – Novelis has been named a TAG Top 40 Innovative Technology Company for 2015. This honor, given by the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), ranks Novelis among the most elite innovators and leading technology companies headquartered in the state. Regardless of market or industry, Top 40 companies all have two important traits in common – their innovations have 1) proven societal and financial impact, and 2) national and global reach.

Novelis earned its spot on the list for our latest alloy innovation for automotive aluminum, the Novelis Advanz^TM s615 alloy, which was first commercially implemented in the all-new, aluminum-bodied 2015 Ford F-150. Developed to meet Ford’s demanding 6HS2 specification but designed for a wide range of commercial applications, the Advanz s615 alloy had to be both extremely formable for high volume vehicle part stamping and assembly and extremely strong to meet demanding new standards for toughness and durability.  This new alloy provides twice as much toughness as conventional automotive alloys, uniquely combining strength, toughness and formability like never before.

See this alloy innovation in action in the 2015 Ford F-150 Torture Test video…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeMrvLb3QKA

Led by researchers, metallurgists, engineers and technologists at the Novelis Global Research & Technology Center in Kennesaw, Georgia, the project team grew quickly to more than 50 Novelis experts around the world providing expertise in alloy design, process and equipment engineering, operations, quality control, molten metal processing, casting and more. This global collaboration enabled the team to move quickly, from problem identification, to laboratory invention, to production testing, to commercial implementation in just eight months.

Today, this new-to-the-world aluminum alloy is setting new standards for vehicle strength-toughness combination in the automotive industry and can be seen on the road today in the Ford F-150, the 2015 Truck of the Year in both North America and Canada.

Other innovators that made the TAG Top 40 list range from well-established brands like GE Distributed Power to breakthrough start-ups like Bastille, a cybersecurity company for the emerging “internet of things.” Only forty companies were recognized across TAG’s more than 26,000 members, and we’re proud to be one of them.