New laboratory testing facilities at Axion Polymers’s Manchester-based end-of-life (ELV) vehicle recycling facility have been officially opened by the Liberal candidate for European Commission President and former Prime Minister of Belgium, Guy Verhofstadt MEP.

Axion’s plant has an annual capacity of 200,000 tonnes, separating the non-metallic fractions (ASR or shredder ‘fluff’) from the equivalent of about 800,000 cars a year.

The new laboratory testing equipment installed at the plan reportedly allows Axion to ‘deliver accurate sampling results from complicated waste streams’, while new equipment has also been installed related to ‘advanced leading-edge research projects on precious metals and metals recovery from hydrogen fuel cells’.

On a tour of the site, Verhofstadt was told how Axion’s Shredder Waste Advanced Processing Plant (SWAPP) can recycle and recover 95 per cent of ELVs by producing recycled plastics that go back into new automotive components.

Other materials recycled at the plant include aggregates for the construction industry and high calorific solid recovered fuel.

Carrot over the stick

Speaking of the laboratory, Verhofstadt said: “It’s great innovation. This plant is the future and we will need more like them as we move to a circular economy. We should encourage the automotive industry to make more use of recycled materials that are produced here.”

Axion Director Keith Freegard added: “While it was very rewarding to see that someone so senior in European government has taken an interest in the new green economy that we’re creating here in Manchester, it was also the perfect opportunity to highlight the need for economic or legislative drivers that encourage more engagement from automotive manufacturers with the products that are now becoming available from end-of-life treatment.”

Freegard suggested the rate of transition to a truly circular economy will be much accelerated by some strong, positive economic drivers – ‘big carrots rather than big sticks’ - that reward car manufacturers who use materials that have been recycled from their own end-of-life products.

He continued: “At the moment in the UK there is a lack of any positive driver to make that happen. What we need now in the next phase of moving towards a circular economy is a ‘big carrot’ - some fiscal benefit to car manufacturers who can demonstrate the conversion of significant quantities of fully traceable recycled polymers from the automotive treatment plants back into new vehicle components.

“I think that enabling good quality recycled products to break into the automotive sector and a rethink in the design of new components for cars really needs some governmental intervention to create the pump-priming effect to start it happening.”

Under the European End of Life Vehicles (ELV) Directive, all member states will need to reuse and recover a minimum of 95 per cent of ELVs (by an average weight per vehicle and year) by 1 January 2015.

Axion Polymers is part of the Axion Group that develops and operates resource recovery and processing solutions for recycling waste materials.

Read more about Axion Polymers.