This year’s Spring Meeting was hosted by the Irish IMVRA. All members’ representatives met in Dublin. The morning conference was organised by general secretary Toddy Cuthbert. After a word of welcome from chairman Gerry O’Connor, the first speaker was announced.
Jonathan Cullen from the Environmental Ministry started with the first speech. He explained the current situation and plans in Ireland. Deregistration and responsibilities are divided over several ministries. Enforcement wil be reorganised from 31 counties to 3 regions for more consistancy and special knowledge. The biggest effort now lies in setting up one deregistration system and making it a live, online system. Tackling illegals is also an item as they realize too many vehicles are dismantled outside the reporting scope.
Second speaker was Bernadette Prosser, setting up the producers network and reporting system. This is a system formed by the OEM’s. It will replace the current system in which 31 counties report separately to the national government. They aim to get 100% vehicles in their system. So all vehicles should go to authorised dismantlerds and illegals should be excluded from getting ELV’s or issuing COD’s. In Ireland about 100.000 ELV’s need to be dismantled each year. They also want to invest in PST for separation of non-metallics.
Last speaker was EGARA’s chairman Paul Fox with a speech about EGARA as an organisation, our industrie’s business and our main topics. At this moment in some countries the waste status of spare-parts frustrates trade as well as recycling, without any goal. Still 4.5 million ELV’s are missing in the EU. ATF’s should be better protected against illegals. Governments should realize the the loss in their national income via illegals as they pay no taxes or VAT to start with. To have a big advantage over illegals we need to have simple acces to producers data. Also prevention and reuse are served with better sales of spare-parts. They help decreasing the vehicles footprint they are used on. Good registration systems, aided with push and pull factors should direct ELV’s to only legal dismantlers. COD’s should be issued by dismantlers only. Good spare parts need to be salable at any time without unnecessary efforts or meaningless administrative burden.
In the afternoon The closed EGARA meeting was held. We had a good and efficient meeting. Besides the normal treatment and discharge of the finances, main topics were parts info and waste status.
Both the ELV Directive and the Euro 5/6 regulation should help us getting acces to OEM info. The Directive works indirectly via national implementation and is not very strict in it’s directions. Euro 5/6 describes obligations to producers directly. EGARA got a quite extensive answer from Mr. Philippe Jean from DG Enterprises about Euro 5/6. Main points are: we are in fact economical operators and there’s no difference in new or used parts, which is good news. We will use these facts in our advantage.
Waste status spare-parts means in some countries governments feel they must be treated as waste at all time. This makes especially export almost impossible. Spare parts are products. This also the opinion of the EC, but memberstates can make stricter rules. The spare-parts waste status may be a topic next TAC meeting in November. Members should check what status their government uses or plans to use for spare-parts, or already start lobbying not to choose the option for waste and complicated and meaningless certifications. Once removed from an ELV, a spare part is chosen and
judged good for direct reuse and thus a product. It’s no sense making reaching targets more difficult than necessary (or impossible). It’s no benefit for car owners, not for governments and not for our industry.
The second day we made an excursion to Gannon’s City Recovery and Recycling Services. Every day and all day long they tow all kinds of vehicles to their facility for all kinds of purposes. From recovered accident or stolen vehicles, to confiscated vehicles for owners not paying taxes, to storing vehicles for forensic investigations, all kinds of vehicles are stored until given free for processing. Trucks, as well as normal cars, motorcycles, scooters, quads and even a lawn mower are waiting on site. The company makes about 10.000 recoveries a year and about 4000 are depolluted and crushed a year. Dismantling of about 5000 vehicles a year takes place in another facility. Gannon’s has 15 recovery trucks driving around and their facility is about 4.5 acres. We thank Anthony Gannon for showing us around and explaining his business.
Again EGARA had a fruitfull meeting and we thank IMVRA and especially Gerry O’connor and Toddy Cuthbert for taking good care of us.
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