British multinational car company Jaguar Land Rover Limited announced a new project for reusing recycled aluminium in new car production earlier this week.
The program, known as REALITY, is the next step in JLR’s ongoing strategy of harvesting aluminium from end-of-life cars and reintegrating it in new vehicles. The £2-million (US$2.62 million) project builds upon its existing REALCAR project, which the firm says yielded in over 75 thousand metric tons of aluminium scrap being reintegrated in new JLR units.
Begun in 2008, REALCAR, which is spearheaded by Jaguar Land Rover, is a collaboration of several firms to develop a “closed-loop vehicle production model” that utilizes recycled aluminium. JLR has invested £13 million (US$17 million) in the project thus far, which it says will yield substantial benefits both to the environment and the firm’s bottom line, as utilizing recycled aluminium consumes as much as 95 percent less energy than smelting primary aluminium from bauxite ore.
JLR is not alone in this project. Supporting it are parties including Novelis, Norton Aluminium, Brunel University London, WMG University of Warwick, Axion Recycling, and Innoval Technology. In addition, Innovate UK supported the project with a grant of £1.3 million (US$1.7 million) in the course of the organization’s 2016 Manufacturing and Materials Round One competition.
Innovate UK’s director of manufacturing and materials Simon Edmunds lavished high praise on JLR’s latest bid to reintegrate waste aluminium into its production process.
“Innovate UK is proud of our support for the REALCAR programme … This exciting latest stage of the project, REALITY, is another excellent example of collaboration between large and small businesses in the supply chain, supporting them to scale up and become more productive. These projects have been a model in terms of professional delivery of complex research and development.”
Both beginning in post-war Britain in the 1940s, Jaguar and Land Rover merged under the British Leyland conglomerate in 1968. The two brands reunited under the Ford Motor Company in 2002. Ford subsequently sold both brands to India’s Tata Motors in 2008.