ReMA 2025 Roundtable Speaker Preview – Meet Lucy Winchel

From Wednesday, September 10, to Friday, September 12, traders, processors, and consumers across the U.S. and abroad will congregate in Chicago for the ReMA 2025 Roundtables. This two-and-a-half-day event features massive networking opportunities in tandem with expert market analysis.

ReMA News had the opportunity to chat with Lucy Winchel, a speaker at the Aluminum Roundtable on Wednesday, Sept. 12. Winchel manages the Primary Aluminum metals book at Traxys North America. Her career began as an aluminum trader at Philip Brothers in 1980. Through the years, she has had other aluminum trading roles at Fred Lonner and Co., Wise Metals, and Nobile Americas with the last eight years at Traxys. Over these years she has traded various physical and financial aluminum products.

Tell me about your background.

I’ve been trading aluminum since 1980. I started at Philip Brothers, and I’ve been at Traxys for the last eight years.  I manage the aluminum book in North America. We have teams in Europe and in Singapore covering the Asian markets. My focus has always been on primary aluminum. Our strategic partnership with Pure Aluminum, which we announced in May, is our reentry into the world of recycled materials.

What are some challenges and opportunities you see in the aluminum space?

I think the intent of this exercise of tariffs is an altruistic one—the goal of bringing back production to the U.S. and having more self-sufficiency is probably the correct thing to do. However, the practicality of it is completely different. Bringing back production or starting a Greenfield smelter takes time and market conditions have to be favorable for the foreseeable future to justify the investment.

With current tariffs our domestic mills will get busier trying to replace the imports, but then the question is where are they going to get the metal they need? Midwest premiums need to be high enough for the global producers to ship to the U.S.  We are still reducing inventories that have been sitting in the U.S. from the beginning of the year. There is much uncertainty as to what the metal availability for 2026 will look like.

What are you looking forward to at Roundtables?

I attend Roundtables every year where I get to meet with many of my customers and suppliers.

I’m very eager to hear from our suppliers at the Roundtables this year. Last year at this time we were coming out of a 10 percent tariff environment which quickly went to 25% and then 50%, which was the ultimate unexpected situation. So, Roundtables is more important than ever this year to get a better handle on what’s to come from the primary and recycled materials markets.