In yards where scrap steel is piled high, massive heavy machinery operates without pause as end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) are dismantled one after another. Recovered parts are reused, while rare metals extracted from automobile batteries are recycled as raw materials for new batteries.

These scenes may be unfamiliar to most people, but they represent the very frontlines of the circular economy where resources circulate and are transformed into new values.

“For us, the resource recycling business is not something out of the ordinary. Rather, it is something we have long done as a matter of course,” says Mr. Toda.

Mr. Toda serves as a Group Leader in the Reverse Supply Chain Business Department. As he explains, Toyota Tsusho has been engaged in resource recycling well before demand for recycling and material recovery reached today’s levels.

“As a member of the Toyota Group, we began collecting and recycling steel scrap or scrapped cars generated in automobile manufacturing processes in the 1970s. Since then, we have been deeply involved in Toyota Group manufacturing, remaining engaged across every stage of the vehicle life cycle to ensure that resources are utilized to their fullest.”

For example, metal scrap generated during new vehicle production is sorted, processed, and rigorously quality-controlled before being reused as raw materials for steel and aluminum raw materials, where it is reborn as automotive parts. From ELVs, we also recover a wide range of materials, including ferrous and non-ferrous metals and plastics, and recycle them using optimal technologies. The resulting recycled materials are returned to the supply chain as new vehicle parts and materials, supporting ongoing resource recycling efforts.
With an eye toward the growing adoption of electric vehicles, we have in recent years placed particular emphasis on EV batteries, accelerating the development and commercialization of technologies that efficiently recover rare metals from used batteries and reuse them as high-quality battery materials.

As production bases of customers, including the Toyota Group, expanded across North America, Europe, Asia, Central and South America, and Africa, Toyota Tsusho’s resource recycling network broadened alongside them.

In recent years, shifts in the momentum of the circular economy have been driven by three key factors:

In July 2025, Toyota Tsusho made Radius, a leading recycling company in North America, a wholly owned subsidiary.

It was 2023 that we seriously began our discussions on collaboration with Radius.
Radius, a long-established company founded in 1906, is one of North America’s foremost recycling businesses, handling approximately 4.8 million tons of scrap each year. Not only collecting, sorting, and processing metal scrap, it also operates Pick-n-Pull upstream—a vehicle dismantling and used parts business—and has firmly established itself as an automotive recycler in the North American market.
Mr. Tomita, who joined the evaluation team from the initial concept phase and was involved in market analysis and the selection of candidate companies, explains the thinking behind the decision.

“In Japan, we have achieved an ELV recycling rate of nearly 99%, which is an extremely high level. To leverage this expertise and expand our business on a global scale, we believed that a broad and stable collection network was crucial. In that respect, we felt great potential in Radius.”

“The decisive factor was the similarity in our values. Radius has a set of values called ‘SSI,’ which takes its initial from the former company name ” Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc” and emphasizes Safety, Sustainability, and Integrity. Safety, in particular, is treated as the top priority, and I was struck by the fact that every meeting starts with sharing safety topics. The way top management themselves share incidents and lessons from the field and work on improvements across all sites closely resonates with our own culture. It made me confident that we could work well together.”

As a member of the Toyota Group, Toyota Tsusho has long upheld the principles of Genchi Genbutsu and safety first. The values that Radius has cherished for more than a century are deeply aligned with those principles at their core.

With the acquisition of Radius, Toyota Tsusho’s circular venous business has entered a new phase.

By combining Radius’s overwhelming collection network with the recycling functions, recycling technologies, and quality control and closed-loop construction capabilities that Toyota Tsusho has built over many years, the supply chain for high-quality recycled materials in the North American market will be further strengthened.

We are focusing in particular on maximizing synergies across three areas—metal scrap, ELVs, and vehicle-mounted batteries—with the goal of establishing a global supply hub for recycled resources.

“Five months after the acquisition, we are beginning to see new possibilities emerge following integration, in addition to the product- and service-related synergies we initially envisioned. One example is collaboration with a major U.S. steel manufacturer. Scrap collected through Radius’s network is supplied to that company, and the steel products manufactured there are then supplied by Toyota Tsusho to automobile manufacturers. In this way, we will realize a complete closed loop in North America that integrates the venous side of collection with the arterial side of manufacturing,” says Mr. Tomita.