Stellantis has opened a vehicle dismantling centre in Morocco, its first in the Middle East and Africa region, as the owner of Peugeot and Jeep looks to tap the country’s growing market for reused car parts, it said on Wednesday.
Rising prices and reduced availability of raw materials, as well as environmental costs to extract them, are pushing manufacturers and regulators to reuse and recycle more.
Stellantis invested €1.6m (R31m) in the centre, which can dismantle up to 10,000 vehicles per year. Casablanca is Stellantis’s third vehicle dismantling centre worldwide, after Turin in Italy and Sao Paulo in Brazil.
The centre is designed to serve Morocco and West Africa. Its main activities are:
- sourcing end-of-life vehicles;
- dismantling;
- selling used parts; and
- collecting parts for recycling.
The dismantled parts will mainly be sold in Morocco. The Moroccan market for reused parts could reach 5-billion dirhams (R9bn) by 2030, Jean Christophe Bertrand, senior vice-president for Stellantis Middle East & Africa Parts and Services, told journalists.
Morocco has around 4.7-million vehicles in use and more than 17,000 reach end-of-life each year, he added.
“We have plenty of profit pools in the Middle East and Africa, and what we are doing in Morocco could be an opportunity to grow our business in many places,” Bertrand said.
Earlier this year Morocco surpassed South Africa as the continent’s largest vehicle producer.
Reuters
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