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Novelis has been honored with the 2025 German Ecodesign Award 2025 in the category “Product” for its pioneering prototype aluminum sheet made with 100% end-of-life vehicle scrap. This innovation marks a major milestone in sustainable automotive manufacturing and circular economy practices.

Pioneering circular automotive solutions

The award-winning prototype demonstrates that a car-to-car recycling loop is technically and economically feasible. The aluminum sheet is specifically engineered for exterior car body applications and sets a new benchmark in sustainable material innovation by exclusively utilizing aluminum sourced from end-of-life automotive scrap.

Today’s commercially available alloy Novelis Advanz® 6F – e170RC for outer skin applications contains at least 75% recycled content, sourced from a mix of pre-consumer vehicle manufacturing scrap and post-consumer aluminum from various end-of-life products.

“This award is a recognition of the vision and dedication of our team that made this innovation possible,” said Michael Hahne, VP Commercial, Novelis Europe. “We thank the jury of the German Ecodesign Award for this honor which will further motivate us to deliver more sustainable solutions to the market and strengthen collaboration across the recycling ecosystem.” 

“The introduction of recycled aluminium has the potential to significantly reduce the automotive sector’s environmental footprint. The project provides an excellent example of implementing circular economy principles across the value chain and a strong impetus for further developing the European End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation,” said Siddharth Prakash, Head of Subdivision Circular Economy and Global Value Chains in the field of Sustainable Products and Material Flows at Öko-Institut, Freiburg and Jury Member of the German Ecodesign Award 2025. 

Group Picture f.l.t.r.: Siddharth Prakash, Group Leader for Circular Economy & Global Value Chains at the Öko-Institut e.V. in Freiburg; Marcel Haefliger, Director Sales & Marketing Automotive Europe; Michael Hahne, Vice President, Commercial, Novelis Europe; Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for the Environment, Climate Protection, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety.

Established Recycling Loops and High Material Efficiency

Novelis has strategically established and invested in closed loop recycling systems to bring automotive production scrap back into its products and prevent down-cycling. As part of its ambitious Novelis 3×30 sustainability strategy, the company is actively promoting a fully circular economy to establish product-to-product recycling for aluminum.

Up to 95% CO₂ savings through Aluminium Recycling

Recycling aluminum reduces energy consumption and CO₂ emissions by up to 95% compared to primary aluminum production. The introduction of highly recycled aluminum alloys therefore has the potential to significantly reduce the environmental footprint of the automotive industry.  

About the German Ecodesign Award

The German Ecodesign Award is Germany’s highest state award for ecological design according to its organizers. It has been presented since 2012 by the Federal Ministry for the Environment and the German Environment Agency in cooperation with the International Design Center Berlin (IDZ). It honors pioneering products, services, and concepts that combine design and environmental responsibility in an innovative way. 

The official award ceremony took place on December 1, 2025, in Berlin.

Copyright all Pictures: Sandra Kühnapfel © IDZ

Collaboration aims to advance industrial production of automotive skin aluminium alloy with recycled content over 95%.
  • Novelis and The Future is NEUTRAL have joined forces to scale up the industrial production of a circular aluminium alloy containing over 95% recycled content – including more than 50% post-consumer scrap from end-of-life vehicles.

  • By integrating greater volumes of post-consumer scrap into the automotive value chain, the collaboration between Novelis and The Future is NEUTRAL aims to pioneer a new era of circularity in the automotive industry.

Novelis Inc., a leading sustainable aluminium solutions provider and world leader in aluminium rolling and recycling, and The Future is NEUTRAL, the first 360° circular economy enterprise in the automotive world, announced their collaboration on a circular end-of-life recycling solution. This partnership aims to push the boundaries of recycled content in automotive aluminium sheet to at least 95%, including a minimum of 50% scrap from end-of-life vehicles.

Novelis already supplies carmakers with products made from up to 85% recycled aluminium for outer skin panels and forming-critical applications in vehicles. Building on this success, the partnership between Novelis and The Future is NEUTRAL seeks to achieve even higher recycled content, leveraging The Future is NEUTRAL’s expertise in sourcing and segregating end-of-life vehicle scrap.

The Future Is Neutral automotive scrap dismantling

At Novelis, we are committed to pushing the boundaries of high recycled content aluminium and reducing the carbon footprint of our solutions. By 2030, we aim for 75% average recycled content in our products and to be the lowest emissions flat rolled products (FRP) aluminium provider with less than 3 tonnes CO2 emissions per tonne of FRP. Collaborations with strong partners like The Future is NEUTRAL are crucial to achieving these goals by retrieving greater volumes and high-quality aluminium scrap from end-of-life vehicles.

Michael Hahne, Vice President, Commercial, Novelis Europe

Aluminium is an excellent material for reducing the weight of vehicles and batteries. Recycling aluminium uses only 5% of the energy required for primary aluminium production and reduces CO2 emissions by more than 90%. The automotive industry is increasingly seeking competitive solutions to source low-carbon aluminium. Our goal is to provide them with circular recycled materials sourced from end-of-life vehicles. Our partnership with Novelis enables us to combine our expertise in automotive circularity to serve this purpose and position both companies at the forefront of this initiative.

Xavier Kaufman, Chief Business Officer, The Future is NEUTRAL

Closing The Loop Together

Novelis and The Future is NEUTRAL have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to advance the industrialization of their recycling solution. The partners aim to integrate sufficient volumes of valuable automotive aluminium feedstock from end-of-life vehicles into the value chain to meet the needs of the automotive industry and prevent downcycling.

The companies are jointly seeking to further optimize the quantity and quality of post-consumer automotive aluminium scrap, as well as its transformation processes. The Future is NEUTRAL has expertise in the collection, dismantling and sorting of end-of-life materials, including aluminium, whilst Novelis is a world leader in aluminium recycling and supplier of innovative, low-carbon aluminium products with high recycled content.

The shared objective is to build a competitive industrial offering of high-recycled-content aluminium automotive sheet made with a maximum of post-consumer scrap from end-of-life vehicles, able to supply the European automotive industry for mass production.

Closed Loop Automotive End-of-Life Recycling

Alumobility, in partnership with Porsche, unveils the findings of their latest study focusing on aluminum lightweight design. Titled “Aluminum Lightweight Study: A Conversion of the Porsche Taycan Top Hat from Mixed Material to an Aluminum Design,” the study explores the potential benefits of utilizing aluminum in vehicle construction.

Find more information on the announcement click here.

From the collaborative minds of Novelis’ top automotive experts Jamie Zinser, Vice President, Global Automotive, Xavier Varone, Global Technical Director, and Don Whitacre, Director, Automotive Technical Development, a recently published Thought Leadership shows why aluminum is now the fastest-growing automotive material and the key to success for automakers seeking to transition to lighter, greener and simpler to manufacture vehicles. 

Pound for pound, kilo for kilo, no other material can match aluminum when it comes to delivering the strength, durability and low-carbon footprint demanded by today’s increasingly innovative vehicle designs while also significantly reducing weight. 

Read the full Thought Leadership piece here. 

By Jamie Zinser, Vice President, Global Automotive, Novelis Inc.

ATLANTA, June 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — As the global automotive industry strives to reach ambitious sustainability targets, most notably regarding carbon emissions, it continues to gravitate toward the world’s infinitely recyclable material—aluminum. In fact, aluminum can be recycled and reused endlessly without losing its material properties. This phenomenon is the foundation of a circular economy for the automotive industry fueled by closed-loop and end-of-life recycling.

Read the full report here.

ATLANTA, May 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Novelis Inc., a leading sustainable aluminum solutions provider and the world leader in aluminum rolling and recycling, today announced the start up of its new roll forming development line. The new development line will help Novelis meet industry demand for a process that can produce large volumes of high-strength aluminum auto parts.

Read the full report here.

From scrap to valuable resource: In the Car2Car research project under the leadership of the BMW Group, new technologies are developed for the optimized recycling of end-of-life vehicles. As the world’s largest, most efficient, and technologically advanced aluminium recycler, Novelis is contributing to the project by bringing its expertise in the recycling of aluminium. 

Car2Car, a consortium of partners from industry and science, is conducting fundamental work on the circular economy in the automotive sector. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection, innovative dismantling and intelligent sorting processes are being tested to increase the circularity for aluminium, steel, glass, copper, and plastics in the automotive sector. 

BMW has set itself a target to increase the share of secondary materials in vehicle production to 50%, making increased use of post-consumer materials. Novelis supports BMW in these efforts by supplying the automaker with aluminium sheet containing between 65%-75% recycled content today. The ambition of both, Novelis and BMW is to produce an outer skin panel from 100% recycled aluminium within this project.

“The Car2Car project is another important step toward economically and ecologically sensible circularity in the automotive industry,” says Michael Hahne, Vice President, Automotive, Novelis Europe. “The intelligent, efficient reuse of post-consumer material preserves resources, significantly lowers environmental impact, and, at the same time, reduces dependency on raw material imports.”  

Closed-loop aluminium is a perfect example of how the consistent use of recycled materials helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy needs: recycling aluminium uses only 5% of the energy required to produce primary aluminium, lowering carbon emissions by as much as 95%.

Artificial intelligence (AI) as an enabler for an efficient circular economy 

The Car2Car project is working toward an ideal break-even point between dismantling and post-shredding technology in terms of quality, economics and ecology. Currently, recycling processes still entail high manual workload and losses in material purity. Car2Car uses AI-based sensor technology with recyclable material recognition that identifies different steel and aluminium alloys. This way, a significantly higher-grade purity of the recovered raw materials can be achieved, and the value of the material can be preserved.

The aim of Car2Car is to provide well-founded recommendations for innovative framework conditions that enable shifting from conventional, linear process chains to higher value creation through a circular economy model. 

Novelis has worked with industry partners and automotive engineers to enhance the design of our EV battery enclosure solution. Novelis Director of Strategy, Global Automotive Mario Greco joined SAE International to discuss how we are tailoring our innovations for automaker’s needs.

Read the full article here

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Novelis recently participated in the MaterialLoop project of Audi, a pilot project aimed at exploring end-of-life recycling of vehicles. The joint project, which involved 15 partners from the automotive value chain, sought to build knowledge on how to implement a circular economy for vehicles.

For Novelis, driving a more circular economy includes closing the production loop (pre-consumer) and the end-of-life loop (post-consumer). Novelis has developed closed-loop recycling systems with some of the world’s largest car makers,capturing and recycling the aluminium production scrap from the automotive stamping process. The next frontier in automotive circularity is to explore, test and learn end-of life opportunities with customers.

Traditionally, at the end of their useful life, vehicles have been scrapped and the metal has been sent to landfill or downcycled to lesser grade applications, leading to the loss of valuable materials and creating environmental challenges. Changing this by looking into the feasibility and optimization of reusing post-consumer materials for new cars has gained importance on the sustainability agenda of auto manufacturers.

Audi’s pilot project involved the disassembly and separation of 100 vehicles to recover valuable materials such as aluminium, steel, glass, and plastics. As the world’s largest, most efficient, and technologically advanced aluminium recycler, Novelis contributed its expertise in the recycling of aluminium as well as its alloys, which are widely used in the automotive industry. By reusing secondary materials, the pilot project aimed to create a circular system that could not only reduce waste but also eliminate downcycling, and at the same time improve the carbon footprint of automotive production.

End-of-life recycling of aluminium offers great advantages for the automotive industry, as closing the loop preserves the value of the alloy, minimizes environmental impact, and creates a secure supply chain. Recycling aluminum requires 95 percent less energy to produce than primary aluminium, with commensurate savings in CO2 emissions. Already today, Novelis’ delivers automotive alloys which contain up to 80 percent recycled content.

At Novelis, we believe that a circular product system is key for decarbonization, and we work with our partners toward the goal of keeping all aluminium in the loop, recycling it into the same products again and again.

“We continuously advance our recycling processes and alloys to push the limits on how much recycled content we can use in our products,” explains Michael Hahne, Vice President & General Manager Automotive, Novelis Europe.

“Building a circular economy for aluminium is a focus for Novelis and returning end-of-life scrap to its source is key to become more efficient and, thus, collaborations and new ways of partnering will need to be established. Therefore it was important for us to participate in this project.”

To test the reuse of materials in new vehicles, Audi defined and piloted the further recycling process together with project partners from the recycling industry, the Audi supply chain, and academia. Beyond the technical feasibility of returning materials to the supply chain, improving future generations of vehicles’ ability to be recycled was also a focus of the project.
Through participation in the MaterialLoop project, Novelis gained valuable insights into current sorting processes and the improvements needed to increase the recovery rate of aluminium at the end-of-life stage.


Sorting efficiency and technology play a key role in ensuring the economic viability of recycling. Taking the separability of the materials into account as early as the design stage of vehicles will be a game changer. Novelis has been working on design for recycling concepts with many of its automotive customers.


The pilot project is just the beginning of a journey toward a circular economy for vehicles. As we move toward a more sustainable future, initiatives like this are critical to reducing waste, conserving resources, and protecting the environment.

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Novelis is taking automotive material circularity to the next level. In an interview with Automotive Industries, Novelis Senior Vice President, Corporate Development Derek Prichett and Vice President, Global Automotive Jamie Zinser discussed how automakers can use collection and sorting technologies to reduce energy consumption and increase their recycled content in vehicles, thereby reducing their overall CO2 manufacturing footprint.

Read the full article here.