Did you know that an estimated 8,000 retired aircraft are stored in deserts, jungles, and storage yards worldwide, with a projected increase of 11,000 over the next decade?
This situation presents a significant opportunity to utilise decommissioned aircraft as a source of valuable circular materials, addressing the waste pollution challenges faced by the shrinking legal boneyards globally. High-value materials such as aluminium and carbon fibre, which constitute the majority of aircraft components, are expected to see rising demand, particularly from industries supporting the green transition.
This is why Singapore-based Nandina REM builds an innovative approach to reclaiming precious materials from retired or end-of-life (EOL) aircraft and reprocessing them to aviation specifications for use in new products, such as electric vehicle battery casings. The company has achieved significant milestones this year, including launching reclaimed carbon fibre from EOL aircraft—an industry first—at the Singapore Airshow.
Run by a team of 13, Nandina REM has raised an undisclosed funding round and is preparing for its next funding stage.
Apart from that, the company has also spearheaded the Aviation Circularity Consortium, an alliance of organisations on a joint mission to accelerate supply chain decarbonisation by catalysing a circular economy model that creates value from the 8,000 end-of-life retired aircraft housed in boneyards around the world.
Nandina REM CEO Karina Cady explains to e27 the company’s journey and the future it envisions with its solutions.
The following is an edited excerpt of the conversation.
Can you elaborate on the significance of reclaiming carbon fibre from end-of-life aircraft and how it contributes to the aviation industry’s journey to net zero?
Carbon fibre is everywhere, from automotive and aviation products to green technologies like wind turbines. Its unique combination of high strength and light weight makes it a sought-after material for various industries. Demand for it globally is increasing, with signs of a supply deficit already appearing. However, producing virgin carbon fibre has raised considerable environmental concerns as it is extracted from fossil fuels and involves an energy-intensive process, requiring 14 times the energy production of steel.
Nandina REM’s innovative approach mitigates this supply shortfall while addressing the environmental issues of producing virgin carbon fibre. The key to this is retired aeroplanes decommissioned and left parked in boneyards worldwide. There are an estimated 8,000 retired aircraft globally today, with 11,000 estimated to come in the next 10 years – and they increasingly contain more and more carbon fibre.
Some aeroplane recycling does exist, but after parting out critical components like the engine, the rest of the fuselage is usually crushed and used as construction scrap as it loses its material integrity in the process. However, our proprietary recovery technology can reprocess carbon fibre while retaining mechanical properties comparable to its virgin counterpart. To add, it is 30 per cent lower in cost and produced using 71 per cent less energy.
Our approach provides the aviation industry with a new source of sustainable aviation-grade materials that meet its increasing material needs while supporting its transition to net zero. In doing so, we are also eliminating the increasing waste pollution of retired aircraft discarded in boneyards.
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How does Nandina REM access these retired aircraft materials? Is there any particular challenge to it?
We have developed a strong network of partners where we source and disassemble the planes into parts before sending them to our reprocessing facilities. The challenge is sourcing planes that have been discarded and left to deteriorate in places that can be hard to access – including in jungles and nearby communities within Southeast Asia. Without proper handling, they can cause contamination in their environments and are a liability to local governments.
We are engaged with several brokers for planes in official boneyards but also have an open invitation for governments or organisations in the region to send discarded planes to us as we can breathe new life into them, minimise (or even remove) the risk of contamination in the communities they’ve been left in – and create opportunities for local employment along the way.
Can you tell us the history behind the company? What inspired the founders to focus on this as a solution?
Aeroplanes are some of the most highly-engineered assets in the world, and we wonder what happens to them once they reached their end of life. On average, commercial aircraft can operate between 20 to 30 years before retiring. With commercial aviation existing for decades, you can imagine how many thousands of retired aircraft sit idle around the world today.
With over 90 per cent of aircraft able to be reused or recycled, we made it our mission to turn these decommissioned aircraft into new sources of valuable, low-emission circular materials that can forever be reused in greener manufacturing supply chains.
Each of us holds our passions and professional ties to the aerospace industry, and we bring learnings from our diverse backgrounds across multiple industries, including aviation, finance, and environmental impact.
What is your business model? Who are your users, and how do you acquire them?
A wide range of industries can adopt our aviation-grade circular materials, but our immediate focus areas are aviation and automotive.
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Adoption in the automotive market will happen faster as there are relatively fewer market entry requirements (compared to aviation), and we are already seeing great traction in that part of the business, particularly for our circular metal alloys.
Meanwhile, carbon fibre makes up a significant percentage of an aircraft frame. It will continue to be increasingly utilised for its strong and lightweight characteristics, crucial for aviation purposes. Recognising more stringent testing and certification requirements, we spearheaded the launch of the Aviation Circularity Consortium, which is developing the certification roadmap to ensure the circular materials meet international safety regulations and uphold the highest safety standards necessary for aircraft manufacturing within a reasonable period.
Manufacturers can use our reprocessed materials in products as diverse as aircraft cabin galleys and seats and electric vehicle battery casings. Our strong network of partners, including one of the leading trading houses, Sumitomo Corporation, puts us in a strong position to engage with customers along the global supply chain.
How does Nandina REM foresee the future trajectory of its initiatives in reclaiming materials from end-of-life aircraft, especially given the projected increase in retired aircraft over the next decade?
With the projected increase in retired aircraft over the next decade, we are strongly positioned to claim at least 1.5 per cent of the carbon fibre market, which is estimated to be valued at US$790 million. Our feedstock is large, growing, and accessible through our strong network of partners.
Once the certification pathway to get circular aviation materials back into aeroplanes is established, our reprocessed materials can essentially be used across all industries. We will continue to encourage broad industry collaboration towards establishing a new system where reclaiming materials from decommissioned high-value assets such as planes and wind turbines will be the norm. In doing so, these materials can essentially forever be reused in manufacturing supply chains, thereby removing the need to build new mines and further extract them from the environment.
What is your focus for 2024?
We are on track to reprocess 40 planes this year and aim to double capacity within the next two or three years. In partnership with the Aviation Circularity Consortium, we are also working towards the release of the certification roadmap to get circular aviation materials back into aeroplanes later this year.
In the longer term, we are on a mission to cut one gigatonne of greenhouse gas emissions from industrial supply chains by 2030. Whilst ambitious, it is doable, and we are only at the beginning.
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Image Credit: Nandina REM
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