Standing on stage at the World of Volvo, I felt genuinely proud. Not just of what we have built at Volvo Group over eight decades of remanufacturing, but of the fact that the world is finally ready to hear this story.
Most people think of Volvo as the trucks on the highway, or perhaps the bus that takes their children to school. But there is a whole other side to what we do, one that quietly saves both CO2 and avoids new material take out. This keeps our customers’ businesses moving and turns the idea of waste on its head.
That is remanufacturing. And it is not what most people think it is.
What remanufacturing actually means
Let me be clear: remanufacturing is not repair. It is not patching something up and hoping it holds. It is a rigorous, highly industrial process that returns a product to at least its original performance specification, backed by a warranty that is equivalent to, or better than, a new part. When a Volvo customer receives a remanufactured engine, it is as good as new. That is not a marketing claim. It is a contractual promise.
We have been doing this for 80 years. Today, that experience translates into eight remanufacturing production facilities worldwide, 14 core hubs where we collect used components, and active collaboration with ~100 suppliers. Last year, we sold 900,000 remanufactured parts and generated SEK 10 billion in revenue. This is not a side project. It is a significant, strategically vital part of how Volvo Group operates.
Why remanufacturing is a genuine win – for everyone
I always describe remanufacturing as a win-win-win, because that is exactly what it is.
For our customers, it comes down to uptime. A truck sitting in a depot is not earning money. When a component fails, the fastest and most cost-effective solution is often a remanufactured replacement. It arrives quickly, it performs like new, and the total cost of ownership is lower than replacing with a brand-new part. Customers trust it because we guarantee the quality.
For our business, remanufacturing protects market share, supports brand loyalty, and extends our ability to serve customers even as products age and original new components become harder to source. Some of our best-performing programs are built around components that are no longer in active production. It solves a problem that purely new production simply cannot.
Take an engine as an example. We salvage around 60 percent of the product’s weight through the remanufacturing process. That translates to approximately 56 percent CO2 savings compared to manufacturing a new equivalent. We reduce raw material extraction, cut energy consumption, and significantly lower emissions. When you multiply that across 900,000 parts a year, the impact is substantial. Of course, the environmental savings depend on the type of product, core quality and geographical location of our remanufacturing plant, so it varies.
The process is more complex than it looks
The remanufacturing loop is straightforward in principle: a failed component is swapped at the dealer, the used core is inspected, restored, shipped to the renovator where it goes through the industrial remanufacturing process and then shipped to the next customer who needs it. Everything salvageable is saved. Everything else is recycled.
Managing it globally is not simple. Regulatory constraints, closed-loop country structures, and the need for deep local knowledge across every market make the complexity real.
At the center of it all is core management. The used part is the raw material. If it does not come back, neither does anything else. Get that wrong, and the whole loop breaks down.
Managing approximately 100 supplier relationships, 14 core hubs, eight production facilities, and 900,000 parts a year requires end-to-end visibility that only a connected, unified platform can provide. IFS gives us that operational backbone, control and traceability of the remanufacturing process, and crucial data we need to continuously improve.
From one component to a full circular strategy
One of the examples I am most proud to share is our work on exhaust aftertreatment systems. When Euro 6 legislation came into force in 2013, the diesel particulate filter became a critical, high-wear component. We quickly identified it as ideal for remanufacturing and built a program around it and it became one of our strongest performers.
But we did not stop there. Over time, as we learned more about the system, we found ways to reduce the material used in the first place through design improvements. We developed repair capabilities for the urea injection system. We learned how to extract and recover the precious metals embedded in the system. We introduced new test tools that allowed us to reuse a higher proportion of returned cores. Step by step, we moved from a single remanufactured product to a program that now spans the full R-framework: reduce, reuse, repair, remanufacture, recycle.
That journey, from one component to a full circular ecosystem, is the template I would encourage any manufacturer to follow. You do not need to solve everything at once. Start somewhere, learn, and expand.
What 80 years of experience teaches you
A few things stand out from the journey so far.
Trust is earned through quality, not promised in a brochure. Customers need to see remanufacturing to believe in it, which is why we bring dealers, sales teams, and engineers into our facilities to watch the process firsthand. Once you see the work that goes into restoring a component, you understand what the warranty really means.
Product design matters enormously. How you design a component determines how well it can be remanufactured. A rocker arm where the bushing is replaceable costs far less to restore than one machined as a single piece. Embedding circular thinking into product development and sourcing decisions from the outset does not constrain engineering, it multiplies the value of every product we make.
Raw materials are still too cheap. Working linearly, manufacture, use, discard, costs less than it should, and that makes the business case for remanufacturing smaller, lower-value components harder to justify. But take a longer view, factor in parts that will eventually go out of production, and the economics shift decisively. The circular model stops being just environmentally right. It becomes commercially necessary.
At Volvo Group, remanufacturing is one of the most concrete ways we act on that responsibility. Not a future ambition, an 80-year-old business, running today, saving material, reducing emissions, and keeping customers moving.
SOURCE: Ann-Sofie Wulfsberg (2026 June 16) Giving Used Parts a Second Life: What Remanufacturing Really Means. IFS Blog. https://blog.ifs.com/giving-used-parts-a-second-life-what-remanufacturing-really-means
