Science & technology | The Scrap Kings

Scrapyards adopt new high-tech ways to dismantle cars

Advanced “deproduction” lines are turning the car business into a circular industry

A crushed scrap car is loaded by crane onto a lorry.
Picked clean and ready for recyclingImage: Getty Images
|Poole

Hanging on the wall in the offices of Charles Trent, a vehicle-recycling company based in Poole on Britain’s south coast, is a black-and-white photograph from the 1920s. It shows rows of old jalopies piled high in the scrapyard. Marc Trent, Charles’s great-grandson and the firm’s current boss, smiles at the photo and remarks: “those days have long gone.”

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “The new scrap kings”

From the July 22nd 2023 edition

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