De-and Remanufacturing for Circular Economy Investments in the Composite Industry

Vanguard Initiative

In order to generate growth and jobs through industry-led interregional cooperation, co-creation, and co-investment, eleven European regions came together to form the Vanguard Initiative in 2013. This interregional partnership, which is now made up of 39 of Europe’s best developed industrial regions, aims at promoting industrial innovation and create European value chains based on local Smart Specialization Strategies.

The implementation of Vanguard Pilot, which have been designed with the active involvement of clusters, science parks, research institutes, and universities in the member regions, is the main activity of the Vanguard Initiative. The Pilots aim to accelerate the market adoption of innovations in 8 subject areas by bringing regions and their stakeholders together.

Among those areas, the “Efficient and Sustainable Manufacturing” is the Pilot that supports the competitiveness of the European Manufacturing, in terms of development and exploitation of innovative technologies, products and processes, contributing to materials and energy consumption reduction and increasing overall efficiency and quality. In particular, within the “De- and Remanufacturing” demo-case, technologies and business models for circular economy to re-use, remanufacture and recycle products and materials in all sectors are investigated.

FiberEUse

Large scale demonstration of new circular economy value-chains based on the reuse of end-of-life fiber reinforced composites

Topic: Systemic, eco-innovative approaches for the circular economy: large-scale demonstration projects (CIRC-1-2016)

FiberEUse was a €9.8 million H2020 project funded by the European Union since June 2017 with 20 partners from 7 EU countries. FiberEUse had the goal of increasing the profitability of composite recycling and reuse in value-added goods. Through new cloud-based ICT solutions for value-chain integration, scouting of new markets, analysis of legislation barriers, life cycle assessment for different reverse logistic options, FiberEUse supported industry in the transition to a circular economy model for composites.

Through the development of controlled mechanical recycling, innovative thermal treatment and remanufacturing processes on wind blades and automotive parts in glass and carbon fibers, it has been demonstrated the reuse of composite products in sanitary furniture, design products, sports equipment, automotive and construction. The main project results, also shown during the Milano Fashion Week 2021, are collected in a book, free to download here.