Scrap Aluminum Finding Way Back Into JLR Products

COVENTRY, U.K. – An aluminum-recycling project has seen Jaguar Land Rover reclaim  55,000 tons of the lightweight metal it uses in building many of its products.

The British manufacturer’s aluminum-intensive chassis architecture, showcased in its award-winning Jaguar XE sedan, is behind its development of the reclamation program.

The project involves 11 U.K. press shops using a closed loop to segregate aluminum scrap to be melted at JLR’s Halewood, Castle Bromwich and Solihull plants into aluminum sheet for use in new JLR vehicles.

The automaker also claims the process has reduced carbon-dioxide emissions by 550,000 tons.

Partly funded by Innovate UK, the program also involves the development of a recycled aluminum-based alloy that can accept a higher percentage of the recovered scrap. Two years ago the XE became the world’s first car to use this high-strength aluminum alloy, developed by project partner Novelis.

More than £7 million ($10.2 million) has been invested in the segregation systems to capture and distribute the aluminum scrap for re-melting, reducing waste and retaining quality and value in the metals.

The project “marks a significant step towards our goal of having up to 75% recycled aluminum content in our vehicle body structures by 2020,” says Nick Rogers, group engineering director-JLR.

The structural grade of recycled aluminum has since been tested and introduced in the lightweight bodies of the new Jaguar XF and F-PACE models.