Ford recycles about 20 million pounds of military-grade aluminium scrap every month

Chip Conrad, a  stamping engineer in Ford, North America led the designing of a closed-loop recycling system that recycles 5 million pounds of high-strength military-grade aluminium scrap every week.

Now in operation at three Ford factories, two of which build F-150, the bestselling pickup trucks in America, the system is saving monumental energy and material. According to the company website, the amount of recycled high-strength military-grade aluminium alloy, saved by Ford through closed-loop recycling is good enough to build either 51 commercial jetliners or more than 37,000 F-150 truck bodies a month.

According to Conrad using high-strength military-grade aluminium-alloy bodies for F-150 helps their customers with sustainability. This according to him makes sound business sense and helps Ford reduce its environmental impact.”

The closed-loop recycling system was started at Dearborn Stamping Plant to recover high-strength military-grade aluminum-alloy. The system is now in use at Kentucky Truck, home to Super Duty, and Buffalo Stamping, which manufactures alloy panels for commercial F-Series trucks.

Scrap aluminium material is shredded into chips, roughly the size of a dollar bill, which are then turned into new metal.

“The system automatically knows which of the four different grades of alloy is being stamped at a given time, then it routes the material into one of four trucks standing by to send it back for reprocessing,” says Conrad.

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As Ford boosts the use of aluminium in its product lineup, closed loop recycling systems will play a very important part to justify viability of lightweight materials and to meet overall sustainability targets.

“Our ability to recycle leads to improved fuel economy and capability for our truck customers,” says Conrad. “And it helps us build more affordable, high-performing, efficient trucks,” he concluded.