Locally-sourced aluminium powering Aussie fleets

As Australia’s largest bus body builder, Volgren has enlisted Capral Aluminium as one of its main material suppliers for its body builds.

Over time, Capral’s aluminium has become so integral that it now forms the basis of Volgren’s body structure. Volgren chief commercial officer and head of strategy Yuri Tessari told ABC that there has previously been confusion around the bodybuilder’s use of materials and that Capral has always remained pivotal to Volgren’s Australian bodies.

“There’s been a misunderstanding in some parts of the industry that, because we use the Co-Bolt gussets from Hess, all aluminium used in our buses comes from Switzerland, but our aluminium is all locally sourced from Capral,” he told ABC.

“We only use HESS’ Co-Bolt technology that helps us to bolt and screw our structure together without the need to weld.”

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What makes Volgren unique in the local market isn’t its local sourcing of such an important material, but the choice of material that it has made. Since Volgren was first founded in the 1970s in Dandenong, Victoria, steel has been globally the most popular selection for constructing a bus body.

However, Volgren hasn’t sought to follow the status quo. Its enduring partnership with Capral is all about using aluminium instead of steel, and it started in 1979 when Swedish OEM Volvo partnered with Volgren founder George Grenda to create Volgren and introduce extruded aluminium for bus body construction rather than steel. The bold decision is continuing to have wide-ranging benefits for the growing bodybuilder.

“Aluminium overall is a better raw material to use – it is lighter and has anti-corrosion properties,” Tessari says.

“You can build a body with aluminium that will last longer, regardless of operational conditions. Especially when we are venturing into zero-emissions technologies at Volgren, having a lighter body structure provides us with way better fuel or energy efficiency than what we’d get with steel.”

The use of aluminium in Volgren’s Co-Bolt assembly system has been a particular highlight of the bodybuilder’s manufacturing success in Australia. The technology means the Volgren body frame using Capral aluminium requires no welding to assemble – instead, it can all be bolted on, keeping the quality of each Volgren body consistently impressive.

With the use of bolted gusseted joints, Volgren uses Capral’s custom designed aluminium extrusions to avoid the risk of continuous bus vibrations fracturing welds and creates a better quality bus for local customers.

“Welding a bus structure requires lots of welds, so you rely too much on the quality of the work – which is often manual – faulty welds could easily lead to structural breaks,” Tessari says.

“However, with custom aluminium extrusions, it’ll always be bolted to the right tension in the same spot, so we know our bodies are going to last.”

This security in build quality has allowed Volgren to push the limits with its warranty offerings for customers around Australia. By using aluminium on all of its body builds, Volgren has been able to secure key contracts by offering a warranty that in some cases has surpassed 20 years on its models.

“We’ve been able to commit to long warranty periods because we use aluminium that we know is going to last us for a long period of time,” Tessari says.

“It gives us the peace of mind to take a risk in contracts, as we have to consolidate thousands of components into a single bus, so if a critical part like the aluminium isn’t performing, then we can have a lot of issues.”

In a market that is increasingly being influenced by international brands and manufacturers, Tessari says the ability to use locally sourced key materials is a great source of pride for Volgren. Although running a business often means using the cheapest price is best, Tessari says this must be balanced with the priority of engaging with local suppliers to create a high quality product that is also uniquely Australian.

“These are the differences when it comes to local manufacturing and supply – it’s not just about local assembly,” he says.

“We want to buy key components from local manufacturers – it may cost more than importing it from overseas, but we want to invest in the local supply chain and our local partnerships.

“Sometimes local suppliers are taken for granted as just a percentage of local content on a spreadsheet, but to us they mean so much to what we do.”

While Capral and Volgren’s partnership has been enduring, it’s also been enhanced by Capral’s evolving product offer. In 2023, Capral released LocAl®, a lower carbon aluminium option available across extruded and rolled products.

The LocAl offer uses primary aluminium produced with significantly lower embodied carbon.

Most people understand that aluminium is an excellent material for sustainability and circularity due to its ability to be infinitely recycled. What is not well understood is that the production of primary aluminium often carries a high carbon footprint as the process is very energy-intensive.

“In 2025, approximately 30 per cent of the primary aluminium billet Capral uses in its eight local extrusion presses has a carbon content lower than eight kilograms CO2e per kilogram of aluminium,” Capral general manager of supply and industrial solutions Luke Hawkins told ABC.

“Approximately 300 tonnes have a certified carbon content lower than four kilograms of CO2e per kilogram of aluminium. This is a strategic change for Capral, driven by our desire to make lower carbon aluminium accessible to Australian manufacturers. The market is looking for this product, and as Australia’s largest extruder of aluminium, we must make it available.”

The carbon emissions in primary aluminium production range from under four kg CO2e/kg Al to over 20kg CO2e/kg Al, largely dependent upon the energy sources used. The current global average carbon emission for primary aluminium is approximately 12.4 kg CO2e/kg Al.

“At eight kilograms of carbon emissions per kilogram of aluminium, the LocAl Green offer has significantly lower carbon emissions than the current global average for primary aluminium,” Hawkins says.

“It gives Australian manufacturers like Volgren an important opportunity to make more responsible procurement decisions when they source extruded aluminium.”

In addition to lower carbon emissions, the primary aluminium offered under the LocAl® brand is sourced exclusively from Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI) certified smelters.

LocAl Green aluminium has become part of Volgren’s material arsenal as the bodybuilder makes innovations in the zero-emissions bus body space, focusing development on efficiency improvements, weight reduction and more responsible material sourcing.

“We’ve been able to achieve up to 350 kilograms of weight reductions on our bodies when compared to an equivalent steel body structure,” Tessari says.

“This gives us better fuel and battery consumption on all bus body models that we produce.”

Like Volgren, Capral is a proud Australian manufacturer. Recently Capral joined the well-known Australian made campaign and its locally produced extrusions carry the recognisable symbol of the green and gold kangaroo. With global geopolitical forces continuing to create headaches in the international steel and aluminium markets, Tessari is rapt to have a local partner in Capral around for the long haul.

“As we keep building on our product designs, we won’t stray from using aluminium from Capral – we’ll continue working with them to update our product range as we move forward,” he says.

“We see opportunities to improve our products going forward, and a big part of this centres around using Capral’s aluminium extrusions in a variety of ways to innovate.”