The days when an end-of-life car disappeared into a scrapyard are increasingly numbered. Belgian vehicle recycling already recovers 98% of a scrapped car’s weight, but the next challenge is more ambitious: keeping complete parts in use rather than reducing everything to raw materials.
West-Flemish dismantler Autohandel Didier, founded in 1993 by Didier Vanwijnsberghe, illustrates how that business is becoming increasingly industrialized. The family business that has been giving accident-damaged vehicles a second life for years aims to further expand its role in the circular economy.
Used car parts
Vanwijnsberghe intends to expand its Belgian site – the new facility will eventually accommodate sixty people. The company wants to prepare for further growth at its French operation in Cambrai, which was acquired in 2022 and currently employs 10 people, and invest in automated storage and digitalization.
The family company now keeps more than 200,000 used car parts in stock, ranging from bumpers and mirrors to engines, electronics, and EV batteries. Each component is identified by OEM number, photographed, and offered online to customers well beyond Belgium.
“Choosing a second-hand part results in an average CO2 saving of 80% compared to the production of a new part,” explains Vanwijnsberghe. Reusing a functioning bumper, inverter, motor, headlight or gearbox preserves much more of the energy and economic value embedded in the component than shredding it and recovering steel, aluminum, and plastics do.
“While many companies have to adapt their operations to evolve toward a circular economy, circularity has been our core business for years,” explains Vanwijsberghe.
Industrialized dismantling
Autohandel Didier is more than the modern equivalent of the traditional car break; it is an example of where Belgian vehicle recycling is heading: away from the traditional scrapyard and toward industrialized dismantling, digital inventory, and the reuse of complete components.
Vanwijnsberghe is an important Belgian player in vehicle dismantling and the used parts market. Still, his strength lies much further upstream in the circular chain: extracting the maximum value from a damaged vehicle before what remains goes into the shredder.
Autohandel Didier had about 36.8 FTE in 2025, a gross margin of €5.2 million, and a net profit of €1.57 million.
End-of-life vehicles and batteries
Autohandel Didier is not the only player on the Belgian market, however. There are more than 100 recognized treatment companies and shredders working with Febelauto, the Belgian management body for end-of-life vehicles and industrial batteries.
Among the closer equivalents are De Jonghe Recuparts in Deurne, which claims more than 16,000 tested parts in a three-story warehouse; Auto Recyclage Nols in Liège, which dismantles all brands and is also approved for hybrid and electric vehicles; and Auto Demontage Overpelt, which specializes particularly in Ford and Opel, and sells everything from engines to body panels and electronics.
Belgium among Europe’s best performers
Belgium is genuinely among Europe’s best performers in vehicle recycling. Febelauto says that in 2025 Belgium achieved 98% useful recovery by vehicle weight. More strikingly, almost 25% was classified as parts reuse, and around 69% as recycling, giving roughly 94% reuse + material recycling before the remaining recovery streams are counted. In 2000, total recovery was only around 75%.
Belgium is also notably stronger than its neighbors in actual reuse/material recycling, while the Netherlands slightly surpassed Belgium when energy recovery and other useful applications are included. The latest national figures point in the same direction. The Netherlands reached 98.8% total useful recovery in 2025, while Germany was at only 93.3% in 2023.
Poor traceability
But Belgium has an important Achilles’ heel: poor traceability. The country is very good at recycling the cars it receives, but less good at knowing where every old car eventually ends up, partly because license plates traditionally follow the owner rather than the vehicle, and because authorized and unauthorized operators coexist in the chain. So, Belgium recycles almost everything from a scrapped car — if the car reaches the official recycling system.
The EU estimates that around 3.5 million vehicles – roughly one-third of those leaving Europe’s roads – effectively ‘go missing’ every year, through undocumented export, illegal dismantling or other channels.
This means that businesses, such as Autohandel Didier, suddenly find themselves in a strategically important position: the EU wants more parts harvested, documented, tested, and resold, rather than vehicles being scrapped or fed whole into shredders.
