Aviation International Recycling (AIR) was awarded 80,000m2 of land at Teruel airport in August for the installation of a comprehensive aircraft dismantling and recycling plant, including an R&D&I centre for composite materials.
AIR is an Aragonese company belonging to the Lopez Soriano industrial group, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary, whose activities are the dismantling, scrapping and recycling of aircraft. The beginnings date back to 2015, with the recycling of two A320s in La Muñoza.
Last July they celebrated the recycling of their 75th aircraft, an A319 at Castellon airport.
AIR operates in all airports in Spain, starting its international expansion in 2020, working in countries such as France, Portugal and Hungary, moving all its teams to carry out the dismantling and recycling, being the only ones in Europe that operate remotely, wherever the customer requires it. Subsequently, all the materials are recycled in the industrial group’s own facilities.
AIR has been accredited in AFRA (Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association) since 2015 and has been a member of the Board of Directors since 2022.
In the Recycling audit carried out in 2022 by AFRA, it obtained the DIAMOND level of KPIs, which ensures that it is able to obtain traceability of all the materials that are processed in each aircraft.
Current facilities. Once the aircraft has been processed remotely, the materials are transferred to the group’s headquarters in Zaragoza, where they are processed in the different recycling plants that the group owns in the Parque Tecnologico de Reciclado Lopez Soriano.
Now in Teruel. The concession of an 80,000 m2 plot of land at Teruel airport will allow AIR to build a 6,400 m2 hangar. The hangar’s capacity will allow it to dismantle
two narrowbodies at the same time or a widebody. The award specifications state that the concessionaire’s activity must begin within two years of the signing, but the company’s managers are confident that they will be able to start work on the hangar within the next two years. the company are confident that they will be able to start operations in the first half of 2026. The process of receiving projects is already underway to award the construction contract in October and begin work in January 2025.
New technologies and processes. Aware of the new materials used in aeronautical manufacturing, and more specifically of the difficulty of properly recycling composite materials, the project submitted for the concession included this as the final objective. AIR, together with ITA (Instituto Tecnológico de Aragón), has been researching new technologies and processes for the recycling of fibre and other composite materials for several years.
Article published in AVION REVUE, issue 508 of October 2024, special MRO 2024.