The main objective of the RECREATE project is to develop a set of innovative technologies aimed at exploiting the potential of end-of-life complex composite waste (mainly carbon fiber reinforced composites, and glass fiber reinforced composites) as a feedstock for profitable reuse of parts and materials in the manufacturing industry.
The EU composites market size is foreseen to grow steadily with an annual growth rate of 7.5% in the next few years. Legislation is progressively banning landfilling in many countries and the amount of composite waste to be recycled and reused is growing, expected to exceed 80,000 tons in 2025, what represents a huge potential for the manufacturing industry across the EU. On the other side, there is an increasing market demand of high-performance fiber materials (especially carbon) at affordable costs in many sectors like automotive and transportation and in general for the lightweight design field. It is therefore crucial that new technologies evolve and penetrate key industry value chains. These new technologies should, in the first place, substitute the more consolidated mechanical grinding and pyrolysis to allow the recovery and reuse of materials and components without compromise to downcycling, this creating significant circularity effects, providing both convincing environmental sustainability and economic profitability.
There is a massive potential for replication and multiplication of the RECREATE solution at world-wide scale. Through its demonstrators RECREATE directly affects 70% of the composite consumption sectors (EU Composite industry market size equalled €16 Bn in 2019, growing at 8.8% worldwide (CAGR 2021-2025), including transportation (14% in value, represented by EDAG), wind energy (14%, represented by RES-T), aerospace (15%, represented by Invent and Geven), consumer goods (24%), with Head as our main demonstrator. Moreover, in terms of geographical distribution of composite use in manufacturing, the RECREATE covers the 90% of the European market distribution.