Jaguar Land Rover resorts to light weighting & closed loop recycling

There’s much more to the use of aluminium in the latest Jaguar Range Rover than just minimising body-in-white mass. And, of course, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Jaguar Land Rover pioneered the use of aluminium as far back as 1948 with the original Defender built from aluminium recycled from war time aeroplanes at Solihull.

As Mark White, JLR’s chief technical specialist put it, “Our sustainability strategy is not just focussed on the product itself, but parts manufacturing and in the plant and through our suppliers, real total lifecycle approach,” and that applies equally to both Jaguar and Land Rover products.

Talking at the latest Range Rover launch, White put the marque's increased us of aluminium in context. “There’s a 72 per cent increase in the amount of sustainable materials recycled over the current car, right across the whole vehicle. We didn’t set out by saying it had to be that, but we wanted to make the car not only appeal to the customer from a driving point of view but, also, really wanted to improve the credentials of Range Rover as a vehicle and a brand in terms of its sustainability and its outward face in terms of facing up to the environmental challenge. And we made every effort we could in all areas of the car to make it more sustainable.

“We can’t just pretend the carbon problem doesn’t exist, we have to face up to that and address it in a holistic way. We want to give our customers the type of car they want to drive, we don’t want to make Fiat 500s, we want to make Range Rovers but we want to make Range Rovers that are truly environmentally friendly.”

This strategy equally applies to Jaguar products such as the F-Type built at Castle Bromwich, Jaguar’s fastest and most modern production facility. Because no welding is involved there’s a 70 per cent saving in the amount of energy required than if it had been resistant spot welded.

Moreover up to 50 per cent of the metal used on the F-Type is recycled, and that uses only about a tenth of the energy that prime metal requires to give the F-Type one of the lowest carbon footprints of any sports car. That’s the same target JLR set for themselves with both the latest Range Rover and XJ saloon, but the group has ambitious plans to increase that to 75 per cent recycled metal by 2020. “That’s a big walk for us,” admits White, adding, “we’re working on various projects that are in pilot or research phase that will allow us to do that and the great thing is that our main supplier, Novelis, has said that it’s up for the challenge and has publicly stated that its goal is to get from 75 to 80 per cent recycled metal supplied to us. They’re on the journey as well and working with us.”

That strategy is equally applicable to suppliers like Walsall pressings, Sertec and Stadco who need to recycle their aluminium to put even more reprocessed metal into the loop.

“We’ve tried to apply the same mentality and rigour to the supply chain as we have done to ourselves. We’ve asked all of our suppliers to adopt the same joining technologies, to look at recycling the scrap they produce and make sure they’ve got closed loop recycling in their factories and making sure they minimise their waste wherever in their part of the production phase,” White explains.

JLR’s three latest products, the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and F-Type represent the latest stage in the evolution of its lightweight strategy as White explains. “In the past we focussed on saving body weight; I think now we’re into saving weight on the whole vehicle so the obvious thing to do was to look at the sub-frames, corner geometry, knuckles, wishbones and look at how much weight we can save on them. With the added advantage that the more unsprung mass/weight you save the better it is from a dynamics point of view.