thyssenkrupp Materials Services and Novelis partner to drive end-of-life aluminum recycling

Essen, Germany-based thyssenkrupp Materials Services, a mill-independent materials distributor and service provider, and Novelis Inc. of Zurich, a sustainable aluminum solutions provider and aluminum rolling and recycling firm, have formed a partnership to increase end-of-vehicle-life recycling and availability of valuable secondary materials that can be recovered from automobiles at the end of the consumer-use cycle.

Through the joint development of a digital platform called the Automotive Circularity Platform (ACP), the companies seek to digitalize the market for secondary materials recovered from end-of-life vehicles and increase its transparency by creating an ecosystem with the common long-term goal to increase the recycling rate of cars and reduce carbon emissions.

ACP will be a digital marketplace that connects stakeholders throughout the automotive end-of-life value chain and empowers automotive suppliers to capture and reuse aluminum and other materials, such as steel, plastics, glass, rubber, and more.

The first step is to create a prototype of the platform for comprehensive testing and evaluation purposes. The results of the proof-of-concept analysis will serve as feedback for thyssenkrupp Materials Services and Novelis to make enhancements and explore the possibility of wider adoption and use by their respective industry partners.

For aluminum in particular, recycling is said to be the epitome of sustainable practices representing an approximate 95% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to the more energy intensive requirements of primary production. Furthermore, aluminum is also said to have the ability to be infinitely recyclable with no loss of properties including strength, lightness, durability, and formability.