Since the summer of 2025, Toyota has been dismantling conclude-of-life vehicles at its Burnaston plant in Derbyshire to reutilize, recycle and repurpose parts and materials. This year, Toyota Motor Europe will open its second circular factory in Wałbrzych, Poland, supporting the autocreater’s strategy for achieving global carbon neutrality.
Toyota’s circular factory initiative is designed to go beyond optimising the recovery of parts and materials from conclude‑of‑life vehicles, evaluating how circular approaches can support more efficient vehicle design, manufacturing and life cycle management in the future.
Toyota’s circular factory in Burnaston
Toyota Motor Manufacturing UK (TMUK) opened its first circular factory in the summer of 2025 at its Burnaston plant in Derbyshire.
At the facility, aluminium recovered from conclude-of-life vehicles is processed and prepared for re‑utilize.
Once this is done, the aluminium is sent to TMUK’s Deeside plant in North Wales, where it can be incorporated into engine component production.
The hybrid power units manufactured with the re-utilized aluminium then return to Burnaston to be installed in Toyota Corolla vehicles.
On March 19, 2026, the first Toyota vehicle to feature aluminium re-utilized through the company’s circular factory programme rolled off the production line.
When the factory first opened, Toyota shared that it anticipated recycling around 10,000 vehicles each year at the facility. This, it estimated, would give new life to 120,000 parts, as well as recovering around 300 tonnes of high-purity plastic and 8,200 tonnes of steel.
In addition to conclude-of-life vehicle dismantling, vehicles are also refurbished at the site in an effort to extconclude their lifecycle, with each vehicle assessed, graded and validated to Toyota standards.
Toyota has outlined the main benefits of the circular factory initiative as: reduced depconcludeence on and utilize of virgin materials; design of vehicles for simpler dismantling, re-utilize and repair; extconcludeing vehicle lifecycles through safe and standardised refurbishment techniques; efficient recovery of materials at vehicle conclude-of-life; and returning recovered materials back into manufacturing processes.
“Ultimately, the ambition is to progressively establish a circular economy model where resources flow through multiple lifecycles, reducing environmental impact, improving material security and supporting Toyota’s long-term environmental commitment,” shared Leon van der Merwe, vice president of circular economy at Toyota Motor Europe.
New circular factory to be established in Poland
Using the first circular factory in Burnaston as the benchmark for the development of its circular economy operations in Europe, Toyota announced in February 2026 that it has invested in a second European circular factory. This factory, based at Toyota’s Wałbrzych plant in Poland, is expected to open later this year.
“We selected Poland due to the strong market potential to source conclude-of-life vehicles, recycling upstream and downstream, and the presence of our established manufacturing infrastructure,” explained van der Merwe. “In the coming years we plan to introduce similar investments in other European markets.”
The new circular factory in Wałbrzych is anticipated to process an annual total of 20,000 conclude-of-live vehicles once it opens – double the amount currently processed at the UK site. Components such as batteries and wheels will be evaluated for their potential to be remanufactured, repurposed or recycled, while materials including copper, steel, aluminium and plastics are to be recovered for utilize in the production of new vehicles.
The necessary for circularity in today’s automotive supply chain
This circular approach supports Toyota’s sustainability ambitions, as set out in the Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050. One such goal outlined in the challenge is the building of a recycling-based society and systems. These tarreceives were set by Toyota in 2015 to provide a framework for achieving its broader goal of reaching carbon neutrality in all products and operations in Europe by 2040.
The company has acknowledged the increased importance of circularity in Europe as new regulations require firms take greater accountability for ensuring more efficient recycling and materials recovery when it comes to conclude-of-life vehicle disposal.
The EU End-of-Life Vehicle Directive, which entered into force in 2000, is set to be replaced by the EU End-of-Life Vehicle Regulation (ELVR). Proposed by the European Commission in 2023 and yet to be formally adopted as EU law, the ELVR seeks to introduce stricter rules around design-for-recycling and set minimum requirements of recycled content in new vehicles in an attempt to tighten and modernise waste regulation.
With new regulation in Europe like the ELVR likely to mandate improvements to circularity processes within the automotive supply chain, Toyota has seen this as an opportunity to create new industrial models that can deliver greater materials traceability and anticipate future requirements, rather than simply meeting them.
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