Volkswagen opens first industrial car dismantling line at Zwickau plant

A line built in nine months

Volkswagen started its first industrial dismantling line at its Zwickau plant on Wednesday, 28 October 2026, a day before the group was due to publish its quarterly figures. The line is split into eight work stations, called Takte, in a hall that has been refitted with a newly sealed floor. It will first take apart pre-series vehicles that never received a registration, cars that are effectively new. Older end-of-life vehicles are to follow later, and Andreas Wallinger, head of the Volkswagen Group Circular Economy unit, said those cars should be no more than three or four years old and ideally well equipped. The idea emerged in 2024 and was planned in 2025, and the conversion and approval procedures were completed within nine months, about three months ahead of the original timetable.

Volumes and jobs

For 2027, Volkswagen plans to dismantle 4,100 vehicles of several group brands on two shifts, according to DIE WELT, while Berliner Zeitung gives the 2027 target as 4,700 cars. The volume is to rise step by step to as many as 15,000 cars a year, a level DIE WELT places in 2030 and Berliner Zeitung describes as the final expansion stage. Around 100 employees have already been trained for the new line, and works council member Martin Lehmann said volunteers were not hard to find. Over the long term, up to 1,000 jobs are to be created in this segment. Zwickau currently employs about 8,000 people and still builds around 200,000 cars a year, which tagesschau notes makes 15,000 dismantled vehicles look small by comparison. Danny Auerswald, spokesperson for the management of Volkswagen Sachsen GmbH, said the site had combined all the synergies between car building and dismantling.

“The team at the Zwickau site takes on the task with determination.”

Funding and the state's role

Volkswagen plans to invest up to 90 million euros in the new circular economy centre at Zwickau, covering conversion work, technical systems and applications of artificial intelligence. Handelsblatt and DIE WELT put the support from the Free State of Saxony at up to 10.7 million euros, while Berliner Zeitung speaks of around 11 million euros. Saxony's economy minister, Dirk Panter (SPD), called the line a hopeful signal, but said the region still needs cars to be built there. Panter also said that car production must stay at the site and that the circular economy helps make the site stronger. At the opening ceremony, Volkswagen's brand chief, Thomas Schäfer, put the project in terms of value rather than waste.

“From today we are not only assembling cars in Zwickau, but also taking them apart again. Dismantling and reuse for us does not mean scrapyard, but value creation.”

Planned investment, up to90

Saxon state support, up to10.7

Planned investment, up to

90 million euros

Saxon state support, up to

10.7 million euros

Data from the article text

The plant's longer-term future

Zwickau remains on a list of endangered sites, and production of the models currently built there ends in 2031, after which the future is open, according to Handelsblatt. Saxony's minister-president, Michael Kretschmer, has proposed moving the plant into a new company where the collective agreements would not apply, which VW management sees as making production in Germany unprofitable. Oliver Blume, the Volkswagen group chief executive, floated Zwickau as a site for China-developed models, but the idea was not pursued. An insider told Handelsblatt that doubts in top management about helping Chinese competitors expand into Europe played a role. Zwickau stopped building combustion cars in 2020, and it is one of four German Volkswagen and Audi sites, alongside Emden, Hannover and Neckarsulm, where the future of car production is uncertain.

Doubts about profitability

Whether the recycling business pays depends mostly on the value of the raw materials it recovers, tagesschau reports. Henning Wilts of the Wuppertal Institut said the recycling plant is at best an experiment.

“It is certainly not the answer to all the questions facing the European car industry.”

When the plans were presented in 2025, the young Volkswagen employee Stefanie Haferkorn said many colleagues shared the view that the company would have to accept taking cars apart, and she argued that the work secures jobs. DIE WELT adds that the EU requires new vehicles to contain a share of recycled plastic, which gives the recovery of plastics from old cars extra weight.