"The growth curve is exponential. Just compare the hundred planes made each year in the 1970s with the 700 aircraft made in 2005," said Jean-Luc Taupiac of the European aircraft maker Airbus, who is in charge of the new plant.

"Today there are heaps of airplanes rotting around the world" as companies do not bother to recycle their old planes, he said of the European Union-backed recycling project dubbed PAMELA (Process for advanced management of end-of-life of aircraft).

The plant in the town of Tarbes, in southwestern France, was created jointly by Toulouse-based Airbus, the waste management firm Sita and EADS aviation support and maintenance subsidiary Sogerma.

The first plane scheduled for recycling is an Airbus A300, dating back to the beginning of the company's activities in 1970, and after some 30 years is at the age to be retired from service. Some 200 planes are to be taken out of service worldwide this year and by 2023 the figure is expected to reach 6,500.

The Tarbes plant plans to start industrial-scale operations in summer 2007 with the goal of treating 10 airplanes a year from now to 2010, recycling some 85 to 95 percent of the material in each plane.

Fluids such as oil and kerosene and harmful materials such as asbestos and depleted uranium will be removed first -- though no depleted uranium was present in the craft arriving at the site Friday.

The remaining parts will then be re-used or sold.

"The raw materials are going to become more and more expensive and if we manage to extract them very finely, it will be possible to get the full price for the titanium, the steel, some of which are very expensive, and the aluminium," Taupiac said.

Until now, old planes have been either stored in hangars or out in the desert or broken up in junkyards that do not necessarily respect the environment.

Buying an old plane for scrap costs between 20,000 euros (24,000 dollars) and several million.

Europe's first dedicated airplane recycling plant was opened in June at the Chateauroux-Deols airport in central France by the metal recycling company Bartin.

It plans to dismantle 10 planes this year and two or three planes per month thereafter, site manager Laurent Bruneau said.

Airbus wants the Tarbes plant to establish a mark of quality for other such plants to follow and will work to avoid materials being sold on the black market and control the supply chain of old planes from sale to destruction.

The plant will not be restricted to Airbus planes -- US rival Boeing's aircraft will be accepted --- and military planes may also be treated at the plant, which is supported by the French defence ministry.

The Bartin site recently dismantled 30 Jaguar military aircraft.

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