The Altreat process is a treatment for aluminium and its alloys, which enables plating of various metals such as nickel, zinc, cadmium, chromium and copper. It is a simple process which is based on cyanides, in which nickel plating can be done directly without the intermediate copper plating step. Nickel may be applied on a wide range of alloys including those containing 5% copper, 9% manganese, or 13% silicon. The presence of four metals, complexed in a unique manner in the Altreat solution, provides it with greater stability and longer active life than other formulations based on two or three metals only.