Constellium, an American-Swiss, French-based manufacturer of aluminum rolled products, has marked a significant milestone in sustainable aerospace innovation during the 55th Paris Air Show held from June 16–22, 2025.
The company unveiled the first aerospace-grade aluminum ingot made entirely from recycled end-of-life aircraft.
Developed in collaboration with TARMAC Aerosave and Airbus, the breakthrough demonstrates the viability of a full-circular model in aviation metals without compromising structural integrity or performance.
Aerospace-grade recycled aluminum
The recycled ingot is the first tangible result of a multi-phase project focused on recovering high-performance aluminum from retired aircraft for reuse in new aerospace applications.
According to Constellium, the re-melted material has met the strict mechanical and metallurgical specifications required for future aircraft manufacturing.
This is a critical validation for the broader adoption of recycled alloys in commercial aviation platforms.
“This is not a lab demonstration; it’s a real-world proof of concept,” said Philippe Hoffmann, President of Constellium’s Aerospace and Transportation business unit.
“We’ve shown that complex aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, once thought difficult to recycle to original specifications, can be recovered and reintegrated into next-generation aircraft. That is the foundation for a circular aerospace economy.”
Constellium featured the recycled ingot alongside its Airware aluminum-lithium alloy system at Le Bourget. Airware, already used by leading aerospace OEMs, offers superior strength-to-weight ratios and corrosion resistance, enabling lighter, more efficient aircraft and spacecraft.
Airware’s properties are key to advancing fuel savings and emissions reductions in commercial and defense aviation.
Also on display was the company’s “Wing of the Future” program, a research initiative to develop lightweight wing technologies for next-generation airframes.
This work dovetails with broader industry efforts to reduce fuel burn and lifecycle emissions through structural innovations.
Next-gen flights
TARMAC Aerosave is Constellium’s main recycling partner, providing the raw material for the recycled ingot.
TARMAC focuses on the eco-friendly dismantling and storage of aircraft and engines.
It now has a recycling rate of over 92 percent, making it one of the most efficient operations of its kind in the world.
“The circularity of aeronautical materials is not an aspiration; it’s an operational reality,” said Alexandre Brun, CEO of TARMAC Aerosave.
“Aluminum has always been a strategic material in our dismantling process. Partnering with Constellium and Airbus, we’ve closed the loop, recovering, processing, and remanufacturing aluminum for aerospace reuse.”
Airbus and ValoER support the joint effort and align with global decarbonization goals.
Recycling aluminum uses just 5 percent of the energy required for primary production while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 95 percent.
Such processes offer a practical and scalable pathway toward emissions reduction and resource conservation for a sector facing mounting pressure to meet carbon neutrality targets.
As aerospace platforms grow more complex and environmental mandates intensify, integrating end-of-life materials into high-specification components is becoming a strategic necessity.
Constellium’s achievement signals that a full-circular model, recovering advanced alloys, remelting them at an industrial scale, and reapplying them to high-performance use cases, is not only possible but imminent.
The milestone, first unveiled at the Paris Air Show and credited by Constellium, TARMAC Aerosave, and Airbus, represents a forward leap in sustainability engineering and may shape the material strategies of aerospace primes for decades.
