In the 2015/16 fiscal year Jaguar Land Rover recycled more than 50,000 tonnes of aluminium production scrap and fed it back to the production process in the REALCAR (REcycled ALuminium CAR) recycling project. According to Jaguar, that is the equivalent of the weight of around 200,000 Jaguar XE car bodies. At the same time this saved 500,000 tonnes' CO2 equivalents, because no primary material was used.
Eleven British pressing plants participate in the "REALCAR" project. They have introduced a closed-loop recycling system in which the scrap is separately fed back into the production process. Jaguar Land Rover has invested more than nine million euros in its own pressing plants in Halewood, Castle Bromwich and Solihull, to install modern separation systems there. These collect the production scrap and feed it to the re-melting process. According to Jaguar, this process reduces waste and promotes a consistently high quality of material and added value.
For the "REALCAR" project Novelis developed an alloy based on recycled aluminium that can contain up to 75 percent recycled material. The RC5754 alloy is particularly suitable for the manufacture of structural components in high-volume production in the area of body construction. In 2014 the Jaguar XE was the first car in the world in which the new aluminium alloy was used; today the alloy is also used in the bodies of the XF and the F-Pace. "With innovative projects such as "REALCAR" we demonstrate our commitment to the sustainability-goals we have set. The successes we have had until now are an important step towards achieving the goal of raising the amount of recycled aluminium in our vehicles to 75 percent by 2020," says Nick Rogers, Director Global Engineering.