Recycling aluminium is good for the environment and the economy

Aluminium is 100% recyclable, and the process only takes 5% of the electricity needed to produce new aluminium directly from ore. The numbers are no secret, and in the can recycling sector we know that it takes:

  • 3 cans to make frames for eyeglasses,

  • 37 cans to make an Italian Moka pot,
  • 800 cans to make a bicycle.
Europe ranks among the world’s top countries in terms of its capacity for recovering this metal.

It also boasts impressive figures in the automotive sector, where:

  • 90% of the aluminium used to make rims is recycled,
  • 30% of the aluminium needed to make pistons and cylinders is recycled,
  • 40% of the aluminium needed to build the entire structure of a car is recycled.

Recycling giants estimate that the market for aluminium flat products is destined to double by 2025, under the constant pressure of Asian development.

Aluminium is increasingly being used as a substitute for steel or as a material of choice in combination with carbon and plastic fibres for the bodywork of electric vehicles.

In all this, ZATO is among the world’s top manufacturers of equipment and plants suitable for the demolition, shearing and shredding of aluminium scrap.

Over the past decade, ZATO has researched and developed new versions and specific machines for the processing of aluminium scrap. Its major installations in the UK, the USA, Italy, Turkey and Germany serve as solid references.

The German company, for example, which boasts companies such as Volkswagen and Audi among its main customers, operates a scrap metal processing plant covering an area of 20,000 m², which processes and classifies a scrap volume of 75,000 tonnes/year, of which every single kilogram received as input is processed upstream using the 470kW four-engine ZATO Blue Devil twin-shaft shredder GFS5000 SERIES II.

This equipment has been specialized and improved in its latest form, which sees it operating outdoors, even under the most severe weather conditions, over two shifts, for a total of 14 hours a day.

Ferdinando Franzoni
Customer Support Manager