This autumn’s Aluminium in Road Transport Conference will feature a special Technology and Innovation session on aluminium’s growing role in the automotive sector (Jaguar’s F-Type — pictured — uses some 1,100 aluminium sections in its construction).

It will be chaired by the well-known scientist, historian and TV presenter Adam Hart-Davis, who has presented TV series such as What the Victorians Did For Us.

The conference, organised by the Aluminium Federation, will feature Professor Geoff Scamans, of Brunel University, and Geraint Castleton-White, of Lotus Lightweight Structures — plus other speakers from both industry and academia.

The conference takes place at the Thinktank Science Museum in Birmingham 11-12 November, with the Technology and Innovation Session scheduled for the afternoon of the first day. More than 100 people are due to attend each day from companies such as Jaguar Land Rover, Morgan and Toyota.

Sessions will cover: commercial, economic and material supply and demand; emerging technologies; vehicle strategies; and sustainability and innovation.

Mr Hart-Davis said that he has been interested in aluminium for many years, particularly in relation to the discovery of a belt buckle in Nanjing in the 1950s, which was subsequently found to be over 1,000 years old.

“If you consider that Europeans didn’t learn how to isolate aluminium from ore until the 1850s, this is quite remarkable and also a big mystery. No one has been able to show as yet just how the Chinese did it,” he said.