Nandina REM’s CEO Karina Cady tells us how its innovative approach to reclaim critical materials from retired aircraft can have a positive impact on the aluminium industry, and why they’re looking for partners in the US.

Have you ever wondered what happens when an aircraft retires? The answer is they are abandoned in deserts, jungles, and storage yards across the world. Currently, 8,000 are lying dormant in aviation graveyards, and a further 11,000 are predicted to be decommissioned over the next 10 years.

Some are eventually recycled, but not particularly efficiently. They are crushed and mixed, leaving materials of low quality and often unusable for high-performance applications. Now, Singapore start-up Nandina REM is taking an innovative approach to recycling retired aircraft. It is converting materials – including aluminium – into high-quality, ultra-low-emission and traceable resources for the aviation and automotive industries, to be used in new aircraft and a wide range of products such as battery casings for electric vehicles.

With some of the world’s largest trading houses, such as Sumitomo, on board, and key aluminium partners such as Press Metal, Nandina REM combines deep tech and material science to ensure that the aluminium alloys remain of high quality, and supply the secondary aluminium to manufacturers to reduce dependence on primary aluminium.

“We see retired aeroplanes as a treasure trove of valuable materials,” says Karina Cady, Nandina REM’s Founder and CEO. “We believe that high-quality, recovered materials such as aluminium can become the building blocks of a greener, more sustainable future.”

Image right: Nandina REM founders with carbon fibre circular material

Nandina REM’s bucket list

According to the International Energy Agency, in 2022, aviation accounted for 2% of global energy-related CO2 emissions and is growing faster than rail, road, or shipping. However, while flying is a major contributor to global warming, reducing the number of flights isn’t a realistic solution: aviation data shows that there are almost 100,000 flights globally every week.

This means the industry must significantly reduce emissions through other means, including strengthening the circularity of supply chains. “Even if the majority of emissions are coming from using that aircraft, reducing the overall carbon footprint is still tangible,” says Cady. “If we’re reducing the carbon intensity of an aircraft by more than 50%, that matters.”

Nandina REM has a three-step process to drive its vision forward, which Cady calls its three key buckets. The first bucket is procuring retired planes. It is reprocessing around 40 planes in 2024 and looking to double that figure over the next year or two. This secures feedstock, which allows Nandina REM to create a secure supply chain of secondary aluminium.

The second bucket is certification. Because all materials used in the aviation industry have stringent requirements regarding sourcing and how they are made, Nandina REM works with the aviation industry and policymakers to ensure secondary aluminium is a recognised part of the decarbonisation pathway.

The third bucket is Nandina REM’s long-term ambition: cutting one gigatonne of greenhouse gas emissions from industrial supply chains by 2030. Cady admits it’s ambitious, but believes it’s achievable. “We can get there by creating a guaranteed amount of high-quality secondary aluminium,” she says. “Then, the industry can start to confidently convert their furnaces from gas-fired to electric because secondary aluminium doesn’t need as high temperatures, reducing energy consumption. That’s when the really deep impact in industrial supply chains can happen, and when you can start to replicate the model across other industries.”

Changing attitudes in aviation

A key challenge Nandina REM faces is shifting mindsets in the aviation industry by demonstrating the benefits of secondary aluminium in decarbonisation.

“In the same way that a geologist is going to look at a mountain and think of all of the minerals they can exploit from that mountain, we want to change the mindset so that engineers can look at a retired plane and see it for all of the circular materials that could be harvested,” says Cady.

Cady believes that the aluminium industry understands the significant benefits of using secondary aluminium and driving a cradle-to-cradle approach, with up to 95% less energy needed to recycle aluminium than to produce primary metal. And, while the aviation industry requires further education, there are positive signs that mindsets are changing, with Boeing and Airbus—the world’s two major aircraft manufacturers—making strides in circulatory manufacturing.

Collaboration is key to education, and Nandina REM is a founding member of the Aviation Circularity Consortium (ACC), which brings together airlines, regulators, OEMs and suppliers to build a circular economy for the aviation industry.

“One of the key things we’ve built as part of ACC is to create structured financing products to remove any potential green premium that manufacturers would have to work with to take on circular materials,” says Cady. “Because that’s how you shift the mindset at scale, by providing sustainable materials to industrial supply chains that actually reduce operating costs. That way, it becomes a simple business case, and you don’t even have to make the sustainability case.”

Entering the US market

Nandina REM has already made a significant impact in south-east Asia, and is looking to make headway in the US. With around 5,000 of the world’s 8,000 retired planes scattered across boneyards in the US, Nandina REM believes it can become a major sourcing hub.

One of its key goals in the US is meeting with companies that are already mapping out the circular supply chain for high-value alloys so they can work together to take tangible actions to transform the sustainability of aviation manufacturing.

“At Nandina REM, we are just a catalyst for this to happen; we need the industry to come together,” says Cady. “We do see a shift happening now, but it still requires companies to say, ‘Yes, I’m going to take this first step’. We’ve only been able to get this far, this fast because we have a consortium of partners who are major players in the game. Now, we need more major players and partners to step up in the US.”