Past opportunity
Recycling Excess Manufacturing Materials with Autoliv
Industry
Automotive safety
Revenue
2020
$7.4B
Employees
2020
68,000
Countries
2020
27+
About
Autoliv is the worldwide leader in automotive safety systems. With sales to all major car manufacturers, Autoliv employs more than 68,000 associates around the world and saves >30,000 lives a year. We are guided by our vision of Saving More Lives. We are also driven by ambitious sustainability targets, especially focusing on increasing resource efficiency and reducing our carbon footprint. To accelerate our journey towards a more sustainable future, we are now looking for new solutions to recycling and re-using remnant production materials from our operations. We have identified opportunities in re-using excess polyurethane foam, as well as cut-out leather materials, both generated in our steering wheel manufacturing process. We are interested to hear from innovative material technology companies who could use our materials to produce value added products possibly for not only the automotive, but other industries as well.
Theme description
Sustainability is firmly rooted in our business strategy, which is guided by our mission of providing world-class, life-saving solutions for mobility and society.
Suppliers and external partners play a key role in managing our global supply chain in a responsible, sustainable manner. We focus on integrating sustainability into existing supply chain management processes and work to ensure responsible sourcing. Now, we look forward to capturing opportunities in re-using remnant materials created in our production processes more effectively with external partners.
We believe that collaboration is key when it comes to creating a sustainable future. We have identified great potential in turning our waste polyurethane into various new materials and products in for example fashion, furniture and construction industries. We see similar opportunities in re-using the excess leather material we generate. For both of these materials, we have experience in collaborating with external partners to create value-added products and now we are looking to build on that experience with more collaboration projects.
Opportunity Overview
Sustainability is firmly rooted in Autoliv business strategy and our sustainability targets are integrated parts of our long-term strategic plan. We are now looking for new opportunities to more efficiently reusing or recycling the waste materials of our productions.
Autoliv is especially interested in finding better reusing or recycling solutions for two material categories that are generated in our steering wheel manufacturing process: polyurethane foam, as well as genuine- and artificial leather. We already have local agreements to recycling some of these materials, but we are now interested to co-create global and scalable solutions with external partners in the field of material innovation. We are open for several forms of collaboration - for example selling the waste material directly or creating a joint go-to-market partnership. We are looking for opportunities to collaborate that aim not only to the automotive industry, but also to other industries like fashion, construction, furniture, or other.
Below you can find more detailed descriptions of the recycling opportunities we have in mind. We are eager to hear your proposal for either of these categories, or a completely novel approach which we might not have heard of.
Focus Areas
Examples of solutions we’re interested in
Polyurethane foam
Polyurethane foam is one of the Steering Wheel base components. As its’ degradation time is more than 1000 years, Autoliv is looking for innovative solutions for the reuse of its polyurethane waste, specifically Polyol and Isocyanate. The solution could be a mechanical or chemical process for handling the material and turning it into new products. Do you have a solution for this, or a product that could make use of these recycled materials?
Genuine and artificial leather
Autoliv uses both genuine and artificial leather for the Steering Wheel manufacturing. After the cutting process, there is a significant amount of excess, cut-out material that needs to be recycled. We believe that material can be also used for new, value-added products, for example automotive interiors, accessories, or other products using leather as a material. Do you have a creative use case to utilize our leftover leather material?
