Ford Says Aluminum Supplier Plant Ravaged By Fire Will Reopen Earlier Than Expected

Last month, a massive fire broke out at an aluminum plant in New York, which is owned and operated by Novelis. Trouble is, that company supplies around 40 percent of the aluminum used by the automotive industry these days, with Ford among its biggest customers. From the get-go, it was clear that this incident would have massive financial repercussions for The Blue Oval - which it admitted this week - but on the bright side, it seems as if that plant is on track to reopen earlier than previously expected.

During Ford's Q3 2025 earnings call with investors, the automaker was asked when it expected the Novelis plant to become operational again, after previous reports indicated that it would be "at least" Q1 2026 before that happened. In response, Ford COO Kumar Galhotra said that "the hot mill, which is down now, will be operational in late November/early December. It’ll then go through a quick ramp-up through December."

The Novelis plant - which is the company's largest wholly-owned site in North America - produces flat-rolled aluminum that's primarily used for automotive body sheet and structural applications, along with other purposes, such as beverage cans. Ford has been impacted in a major way by this multi-week outage already, pausing production of several models and slashing its Ford F-150 output in half - while putting Ford F-150 Lightning output on hold indefinitely.

As part of its Q3 financial reporting, Ford revealed that it expects to take as much as a $2 billion dollar hit as a result of this incident, though it also believes that it will be able to make up roughly half of that throughout the course of 2026, primarily from boosting production of the F-150 and Ford Super Duty. The automaker will add shifts and move workers around - while also hiring some new ones - with a goal of adding 50,000 units of F-Series production next year.