The objectives of the protection of natural resources, the reduction of raw material imports and the reduction of emissions, caused the European Community to increase step by step the obligatory proportion of utilization of abandoned vehicles. The physical recycling of shredder light fractions by means of physical processing represents the only possibility to fulfil the legal obligations. The new processing plant, which was constructed by the owner, makes it possible to recover valuable products from the plastic fractions and metals from the shredder residuals. Depending on the composition of the extremely heterogeneous feed material, the process yields 55-70 % of the feed for further economical use. The flowsheet of the plant is discussed in detail and a mass balance for the main feed material is provided. Especially the efficiency of the multi stage air separation process following the primary comminution was subject of detailed investigation. It could be shown that the contained metals are almost completely recovered and that the heavy metals are enriched in the fractions shredder sand and filter dust. The results derived from the applied methods offer support for the plant operator in planning, carrying out and evaluating a sampling campaign for all the feed and process streams comprising the final products within a given limit of reliability.