Airbus // Universal Registration Document 2023
1. Information on the Company’s Activities
1.2 Non-Financial Information
1
IV. Implementation / Activities The Company’s products make efficient use of these materials by being designed to operate for several decades with high utilisation rates, being highly serviceable and repairable, and ultimately allowing for around 90% of their constituents by mass to be recovered, including recycling. The Company promotes the development of a circular economy model, and is proactive in seeking ways to recover, reuse and recycle materials beyond their initial life. Overall, in order to minimise the impact of its activities, the Company’s strategy relies on the approach: avoid; reduce, reuse-recycle-repair, supported by a number of enablers such as measuring, Life Cycle Analysis (“ LCA ”) and eco-design, or digitalisation. Metallic waste accounts for more than 30% of the Company’s waste (excluding exceptional waste). Considering the risk of resource depletion versus growing demand, the Company has kicked off in 2022 and progressed in 2023 a dedicated transformation project related to the circularity of critical raw materials, especially non-ferrous metals, with a focus on the most material perimeter, its commercial aircraft activity. Avoid – Material Use Optimisation Weight reduction through material use optimisation has always been a priority in aerospace, as this is directly linked to aircraft performance. Lately, the development of new technologies such as additive layer manufacturing (ALM or “3D printing”), including for metallic components, enabled the redesign of parts, resulting in significant improvements by limiting material consumption to what structure and resistance require. For example, 3D printing technologies such as direct energy deposition (DED) can reduce the titanium raw material consumption by up to 70%. More optimised design and manufacturing processes for metallic and composite components can improve the buy-to-fly ratios, as well as reduce weight, material consumption, energy consumption and production costs. For instance, forming technology has led to an aluminium material reduction of 80% for some parts compared to machining from a plate. Reduce Industrial waste Waste from industrial activities represents about three quarters of the total waste generated by the Company’s sites, the remaining portion being waste generated in offices and canteens. The Company also focuses on the waste generated by its sites throughout the manufacturing process and has set an objective of reducing these overall waste amounts by 20% by 2030 from a 2015 baseline, including 0% landfilling and 0% incineration without energy recovery. The Company industrial waste is mainly composed of metallic waste, general waste, chemical waste and packaging waste. A dedicated multi-functional team with skills from across the organisation such as engineering, information management, procurement, industrial operations and facility management is actively working on a waste reduction roadmap. Over the past years and including in 2023, the Company has focused on metering and on data robustness and accuracy for measuring waste, with a focus on standardising the practices towards waste collectors and in line with regulatory requirements for greater traceability. The objective is to enhance data monitoring, reporting and forecasting capabilities in order to steer efforts through sites on waste management. This includes
a harmonisation of definitions, processes and assumptions. Priority has been given to commercial aircraft activities due to the industrial ramp-up. In 2023, non-exceptional waste increased by 3.7%, largely explained by the commercial aircraft production ramp up. The proportion of the non-exceptional waste landfilled or incinerated without energy recovery amounted to an estimate of 21%. Hazardous waste In the Company’s European operations, the main sources of hazardous waste are contaminated packaging and chemical waste, especially waste from surface treatment activities, oil, fuel and various chemicals. While chemical waste reduction remains a priority, this is a topic also driven by regulation, the evolution of which may impact the roadmap’s ambition for reducing waste as well as its timing (see Chemical Substances section in “– 1.2.3 Pollution”). Increase the lifespan of components A large part of the Company’s aircraft products components are designed to last for the aircraft service lifetime, which exceeds 20 years on average. Some components, called life-limited parts (“ LLPs ”), have a lifetime which is limited by design for safety related reasons and need to be replaced at specific intervals based on the aircraft age and usage. Repairability – reuse – second life With regards to LLPs, easy replacement and availability of parts over the whole programme lifetime are a priority. The Company’s products are designed to be repaired when damaged by a number of maintenance, repair and overhaul (MROs) companies worldwide and spare parts providers. The Company’s after sale activities include the sale of spare parts and the provision of maintenance, repair and overhaul services. LLPs can be overhauled to serve other operators, routes or missions. In particular, passenger-to-freighter conversions are frequently considered to extend the lifetime of aircraft. Recycling Waste generated by the Company’s industrial processes often includes high-value materials, so optimising their circularity responds to both environmental and economic objectives. The Company sends over half of its waste to be recycled. It is currently working on specific initiatives to further increase this rate, such as specific loop creation for titanium in order to reintegrate chips or end-of-life parts into raw material manufacturing processes. In addition, the Company sources material volumes of recycled materials that are used for the manufacturing of aircraft. As an order of magnitude, in 2023 around 40% of aluminium products delivered to the Company (main structural material in an aircraft) came from recycled material. Finally, the EU-funded PAMELA project, for Process for Advanced Management of End of Life of Aircraft, demonstrated in 2007 the possibility of recycling up to 85% of plane components. More recently, according to TARMAC Aerosave, a joint-venture in which the Company is a shareholder, now more than 90% of an aircraft’s weight can be recovered at end-of-life (including material and energy recovery) through a selective dismantling process. For example, TARMAC Aerosave, provides such reverse manufacturing services, including dismantling, sorting,
97 Airbus Annual Report
Universal Registration Document 2023
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online