I’m not much of a petrolhead and I have never taken a car to pieces before, but there is a first time for everything. I don my gloves, grip a power tool and get to work. After a bit of huffing and puffing, one of the doors comes off, and is spirited away by an overhead hoist.
I am at a car breakers’ yard in Poole, UK, to witness the cutting edge of vehicle recycling. Last August, traditional scrapyard reinvented itself as one of Europe’s most advanced “de-production” facilities.
“The concept is based on production lines where cars are constructed,” says Neil Joslin, the company’s chief operating officer. “Can we do that in reverse?”
Advertisement
The answer is yes. Its new facility, which cost more than ÂŁ10 million, houses what looks like a standard production line, but instead of constructing cars, it deconstructs them. Whole cars enter the line at one end; their skeletal remains emerge from the other. In between, everything that might be reused is stripped off the carcass and sent for processing. Most of the rest is recycled.
Of the total weight of cars entering the facility, 96.3 per cent is reused or recycled, according to CEO Marc Trent. That is above the , and higher than the UK average, which is officially 93 per cent, but probably much lower, according to Chas Ambrose at the Vehicle Recyclers’ Association. Charles Trent is much more systematic than your average salvager, which might scavenge a few juicy parts, but send most of the car to be crushed.
The firm carefully selects which cars to buy to maximise saleable parts. “A big challenge for us is to understand our customers’ demand for parts, we have a team of data analysts,” says Joslin. “We’re very targeted at the parts we take.”
The deconstruction journey begins with cars arriving on trucks. About 120 a day come in – most of them vehicles that have reached the end of their natural life, but also insurance write-offs.
Next comes triage, where engineers examine the car to identify potentially salvageable bits. They then slap barcodes on the cars that detail which bits to cut out and keep, if the vehicle makes the cut.
The wheels, tyres and battery are removed. Saleable ones are put to one side; useless ones are sent for recycling elsewhere. All the cars’ fluids – including fuel, oil and water – are drained out and cleaned for use in the site’s own vehicles. The car then enters the de-production line and a countdown begins.
The line has four stations specialising in different stages of the process. Each is staffed by an engineer, who scans the barcode and follows its instructions. He or she has 15 minutes to complete the checklist.
The first station does doors, panels and interiors; the second lights and dashboards; the third moving parts – engines, gearboxes and axles plus catalytic converters; and the final electricals.
At station three, I watch as a car is hoisted up on a mighty robotic arm so an engineer can cut out the engine, which will go through a special engine washing machine, be labelled and assessed for its reusability. All parts are similarly checked and the useable ones put on sale on eBay – the UK’s leading retailer of car parts – with a “certified recycled” guarantee and a record of its provenance.
The final stage of the process is to send the remains of the car to be crushed in a baler, from where it will be sent to a scrap-metal merchant. The whole de-production process takes about an hour and the facility processes 75 cars a day. The rest of the day’s arrivals are crushed before they, too, go to a scrap-metal merchant.
The point of the processing is to create a more circular car industry and a thriving spare-parts business. Car parts are in short supply in the UK – in part due to Brexit – and repairs using new ones can take months. Many cars end up being needlessly written off due to lack of parts, says Trent.
Meanwhile, consumers and repairers are more willing than they once were to accept used parts, he says, especially when they come with a guarantee. The fact that they are greener and 70 per cent cheaper doesn’t hurt.
Circularity is also better for the environment. The facility has already reduced the company’s carbon footprint by the equivalent of 16,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and kept 3000 tonnes of waste out of landfill, according to an analysis by eBay.
The ultimate goal is to reuse or recycle the whole vehicle. “Within the next couple of years, our target will be to close that recycling loop to nearly 100 per cent,” says Trent. “This is the future of car recycling.”
