Wieland Breaks Ground on Copper Recycling Center

Wieland is expanding its foundry at its Vöhringen, Germany, site to include a recycling center, which will enable the processing of copper scrap. This expansion will increase the global recycling rate of Wieland products to more than 80% after commissioning, according to the company.

Vöhringen, a strategic base for Wieland, is crucial in terms of material supply. From here, plants throughout Europe and parts of Asia are supplied with high-quality, semi-finished copper products. In the future, the new plant on the Wieland foundry site will produce pure copper bolts with a recycled content of 100%. This approach, using copper scrap and granulate as well as on-site production scrap, not only ensures the supply of material to various Wieland sites but also has a positive impact on the CO₂ footprint of Wieland products. The recycling process is based on a highly energy-efficient method known as fire refining. Customers will receive primary material with a low product carbon footprint (PCF), enabling them to make their own process chains lower-emission and more sustainable.

“If we look at the foundry expansion in Vöhringen with a recycling center from a sustainability perspective, this is a global showcase project with a signal effect,” says Erwin Mayr, CEO of the Wieland Group. “The new plant is an important building block on our way to sustainably closing the material cycle and increasing our global recycling rate to 100% in the near future.” This expansion brings Wieland closer to its goal of greenhouse gas-neutral production by 2045. Other cornerstones of the decarbonization strategy are the electrification of all plants to phase out fossil fuels and the full use of renewable energy through green power supply contracts and in-house power generation using photovoltaic and wind power systems.