Increasing recycled content while keeping performance

Short interview: Juan José Matarranz, Gestamp

SALEMA partner Gestamp has been developing technology to produce aluminium alloys that have high recycled content and still meet market and industry needs. Within SALEMA, the company worked on industrial process simulation and how to adapt current industrial facilities for the optimal production of SALEMA’s new alloys with higher levels of recycled scrap. Coordinating these contributions was Juan José Matarranz, Gestamp’s Technology and Innovation Manager. In the final year of the project, Gestamp also used SALEMA’s new alloys to make and test a ‘B-pillar’ to test and demonstrate the suitability of SALEMA’s new alloys. So what’s the significance of SALEMA? We took a few minutes to get Juan José’s opinion.

Thanks to SALEMA, in future cars will be…?

..lighter and more friendly with the environment.

How have you contributed to SALEMA’s goals?

Our company is developing new technology to produce alloys that have high recycled content, in order to introduce in the market a new solution that’s been able to achieve, as maximal as possible, the recycled content.

This helps with our initial goal to become more environmentally friendly in the way that increasing the recycled content helps to use less primary alloy. That is very important to contribute to reduced CO2 emissions.

What has SALEMA achieved?

We are able to select the right alloys to be able to not lose performance of the alloy, and keep increasing the recycled content. We saw that it is possible, if we select the right alloy, for each application.

How will this help our future?

Of course, this is clearly the CO2, the environmental responsibility of the society – so the circular economy. So if we increase the recycled content, the reality of the recycled content in the product that we produce, it’s the right way to contribute to society.

Would you drive an electric car made with SALEMA alloys?

Yes, of course! In fact, it’s good because we are working in the company in so many electric projects, some of them including aluminium, with the technology that we are improving in SALEMA. And we expect to be able to drive this type of car – we’ll be really happy, to contribute the new advance in this way of producing the vehicles.