Caroline Michalik, Director General of France-based Global PRE, discusses the AGEC law’s impact on end-of-life vehicle (ELV) centers. Global PRE unifies stock from approved ELV centers, standardizing part references for the circular economy and offering viable alternatives to new parts. Michalik provides her perspective on the law’s implications for VHU centers, addressing concerns over manufacturer control, eco-organization contracts, and the future of sustainable vehicle maintenance.
The AGEC (Anti-Waste and Circular Economy) law provides for the implementation of extended producer responsibility to ensure the free take-back of end-of-life vehicles and to combat illegal channels.
Although France already has state-approved centers for collecting end-of-life vehicles, capable of processing vehicles according to environmental standards (recycling rates are exceeded in France), new advancements are noted with the implementation of this law.
Indeed, VHU (End-of-Life Vehicle) centers can continue to directly source, dismantle parts from end-of-life vehicles for reuse and valorization. Reused parts are no longer considered waste, and manufacturers must provide part referencing to aid in their identification.
This law requires each vehicle manufacturer and importer to organize around a completely independent eco-organization encompassing all car brands with no commercial interest, or to create its own individual system, allowing them to control the fate of their product by imposing its circuit on its network of dealers, agents, distributors, etc., and ensuring proper waste management.
To continue operating, each VHU center must contract with an eco-organization and/or an individual system, which drafts its own specifications with its criteria and conditions without the obligation of uniqueness. A VHU center can sign with all the systems it wishes. However, by exclusively signing with an individual system (and therefore a specific brand like RENAULT, STELLANTIS, or VOLKSWAGEN GROUP), it is restricted to handling ONLY vehicles of that brand. Hence, the importance of signing with several individual systems and/or with the eco-organization.
However, this obligation to sign a contract turns the VHU center into a service provider for the individual system, raising concerns in the VHU sector about how this new law will allow them to operate.
The rise of eco-friendly consumption becoming the norm, the increasingly complicated supply of new parts, the availability and cost of parts, and imposed remanufacturing processes are economic and strategic challenges for the maintenance and production of future cars.
VHU centers are fully aware of their essential role in this ecosystem. However, becoming dependent on an individual system to continue their activities raises concerns across the VHU sector. The main concern is the capture of reused parts and materials by manufacturers through their individual systems, which could impose processing constraints on recycling actors for their end-of-life vehicles and product distribution.
Indeed, the risk that reused parts are controlled by these same manufacturers could lead to the imposition of their sales conditions, prices, and distributors to the detriment of the independence and freedom of repair professionals and the general public, who may no longer find parts for their repairs and maintenance (as reused parts become scarce).
Therefore, it is important to have an eco-organization that allows each VHU center to sign independently and handle the entire French end-of-life vehicle fleet, distributing parts from the circular economy as they see fit.
Other major issues remain. The final waste composed of various components of the vehicle carcass is now a significant value-added resource for VHU centers, which have the freedom to sell it. This material is also highly sought after by manufacturers who face constraints in reusing materials in their future production.
This new AGEC law raises many questions but also challenges current work processes:
- The supply of VHUs could be geographically consolidated by individual systems, logically reducing the number of VHU centers in the same territory.
- Extended responsibility requires data reporting with separate weighing of each pollutant, part, and material for each system individually (a regulation on this is being drafted but not yet published), leading to complex organization.
- Each center might have to interface with the manufacturers’ distribution tools (BE-PARTS / PRECIS, etc.) mandatorily, and perhaps even as a priority.
- Many unknowns remain regarding the conditions imposed to meet each set of specifications.
Ultimately, the biggest uncertainty remains whether giga-factories like the RENAULT Refactory or the STELLANTIS Circular Economy Hub with the SUSTAINera label will capture all the products and materials necessary to meet their environmental and economic objectives. This could potentially come at the expense of a profession that has existed for decades, supports thousands of local jobs, and facilitates eco-friendly, cost-effective maintenance of the vehicle fleet.
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