BMW Group has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with PreZero, the international circular economy business of the Schwarz Group, to accelerate the development of a circular economy model for the European automotive industry.
The agreement aims to establish a closed-loop system for end-of-life vehicles, covering both materials recovery and recycling. The partners said the collaboration is designed to reduce dependence on primary raw materials, strengthen supply chain resilience and support the sector’s decarbonisation efforts.
Under the cooperation, BMW Group and PreZero will work to develop a commercially viable business model that treats end-of-life vehicles as a strategic source of materials. Vehicle components will initially be kept in use for as long as possible through reuse, followed by advanced recycling processes to recover high-quality secondary raw materials. The approach is expected to significantly reduce the need for newly extracted resources.
BMW Group said the partnership forms a key part of its corporate and climate strategy. Ralf Hattler, Senior Vice President Customer Support and Aftersales at BMW Group, said the collaboration marked an important step towards embedding circularity as a core business model. He added that the initiative would help retain high-quality materials within the value chain for longer, while improving resource efficiency and reducing CO₂ emissions.
For PreZero, the agreement builds on its recent investments in recycling infrastructure, including battery recycling. Carsten Dülfer, chief executive of PreZero in Germany, said the cooperation with BMW Group would support the development of scalable, compliant and economically viable solutions to advance circularity and decarbonisation across the automotive industry in Europe.
As part of the collaboration, the two companies will jointly test and industrialise innovative recycling processes for end-of-life vehicles, while also developing new approaches to material flow management. Knowledge transfer will be central to the partnership, with BMW Group contributing its “design for recycling” expertise and experience from its Recycling and Dismantling Centre, and PreZero providing insights into European material flows, sorting technologies and battery recycling.
The initiative will initially focus on the reuse of components, followed by the recycling of key materials such as steel, aluminium, plastics and battery raw materials. Both companies said the cooperation is aligned with the European Union’s circular economy strategy and its broader goals to enhance industrial resilience and competitiveness.
