When an end-of-life vehicle is deregistered through ORAD (Online Registration Car Dismantling) at a car-dismantling company, parts that can be sold on and materials that must be removed in compliance with environmentally responsible processing, are all removed. Together, these materials and components constitute 24.9 per cent of the weight of an end-of-life vehicle. The remaining 73.8 per cent is extracted by the various shredder companies and at the HKS Post-Shredder Technology (PST) factory in Tiel. Given that fewer cars were processed by car-dismantling companies in 2022, shredder companies also received significantly fewer end-of-life vehicles than the year before. As a result, less shredder residue was processed in the PST factory.
“Shredder companies received significantly fewer end-of-life cars in 2022 than in the previous year”
Wout Kusters, HKS Tiel
Demand for reusable raw materials
Wout Kusters, who is Managing Director of HKS, reckons that interest in recycling is increasing, partly because of more stringent legislation and regulations, and demand is now starting to come from the opposite side. This is because a certain recycling percentage has to be realised and preparations have to be made for a future in which products must partly be made from recycled raw materials.
“Several parties have asked us to consider how this can be done,” says Kusters. “If Europe is to rise to the challenge of being self-sufficient in the area of raw materials, it will inevitably lead to the mandatory use of recyclates. From a European perspective, ARN was ahead of its time with the PST factory. We also receive regular foreign visitors. They are impressed by what we are doing here, because they are not nearly as well organised as we are.”
Link in the recycling chain
In 2022, the management boards of ARN and HKS Tiel met regularly on a small scale under the watchful eye of an independent chairman. Thanks to there being frequent operational consultations between HKS Tiel and ARN, the PST factory today remains the integrated link in the recycling chain that it was before it was sold by ARN to HKS.
Shredder companies and the PST factory will continue to innovate, today and tomorrow. Research in ongoing, for example, into further plastic separation. Furthermore, the extent to which the metal-separation equipment of shredder companies can also be used to separate specific aluminium alloys, is also being investigated.