Renault has announced the foundation of ‘The Future Is NEUTRAL’, a new subsidiary that will focus entirely on recycling vehicles.
The French automaker says that modern vehicles are made up of 85 percent recyclable parts. Moreover, 11 million cars reach their end of their lives every year in Europe. That’s a gold mine of materials that is not currently being adequately tapped into, according to the brand.
“In the automotive sector, the first under-exploited resource is the car itself,” said Jean-Philippe Bachaud, the CEO of The Future Is NEUTRAL. “This new entity aims to push the automotive industry towards resource neutrality, extracting from each vehicle the largest possible amount of material needed to manufacture a new model.”
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To that end, the new company aims to maintain the value of parts and materials and “enable the industry to achieve a much higher rate of recycled automotive materials.” It also aims to be the European leader in closed-loop battery recycling.
By doing that, Renault hopes that The Future Is NEUTRAL will be an attractive battery supplier that can sign contracts to supply other manufacturers. Through this business, its objective is to reach a business portfolio turnover of €2.3 billion ($2.24 billion USD at current exchange rates) and an operating margin of more than 10 percent by 2030.
In order to develop this business, The Future Is NEUTRAL will work with a number of Renault’s existing recycling subsidiaries. It is also opening a minority of shares to outside investors, with a view to co-financing investments of around €500 million ($488 million USD) until 2030.
“Today we are taking another step in our historic commitment to the circular economy,” said Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo. “Our ambition is to bring recycling into a new era and become the European leader in the automotive circular economy.”