Circular Transformation of Industries 2025

Appendix Hydro Archetype 1 Industry EmployeesAluminium and renewable energy 30,000+ Case maturity Ongoing scaling and fully scaled Implementation challenges –Lack of transparency on the carbon footprint of materials, to allow customers to make informed decisions and demand more sustainable products. –Lack of standardization to produce large-scale recycled materials that could be used for all customers and industries. –Regional differences in regulatory requirements for end-of-life/recyclability of products and in collection rates, which limits the ability to recycle. –Outflow of scrap from the Global North to the Global South, leading to diminished control over the sorting process and loss of a key source of value. –Lack of willingness to pay a premium for low- carbon recycled minerals and products, driven by negative perception of quality. Enabling strategies –Partnerships to secure early access to scrap and to gain control of the sorting process. –Development of proprietary sorting technology (HySort) to gain access to more scrap types and allow for high-value recovery of specific aluminium alloys. –R&D in existing alloys to allow for higher share of recycled aluminium content in aluminium automotive components. –Long-term partnerships with OEMs (with 20-30 years’ horizons) to secure demand and mitigate risks from high investments. –Circular design with partners to prioritize recyclability from the early stages of design and enhance circularity across product life cycles.For Hydro, the recycling of post-consumer scrap through decarbonized operations is one of the main pathways to deliver aluminium with a CO2 footprint of zero in industrial-scale production by 2030. Among many other initiatives across industries, they launched their first automotive circular partnership in 2022, with the ambition to develop and supply low-carbon recycled aluminium for automotive vehicles. To achieve this, Hydro engaged the entire value chain. They built partnerships to gain early access to post-consumer scrap, developed proprietary sorting technology to obtain the highest quality and purest materials for their recycling process, and partnered with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and Polestar. This long-term collaboration has enabled the co-development of materials tailored to OEM needs and ensured that OEMs detail the new material in their component requirement specifications. Circular Transformation of Industries: Unlocking Economic Value 23