Circular Value Center (CVC) launches Remanufacturing roadmap

Circular Value Center (CVC) Launches Roadmap Remanufacturing

On October 25, 2023 during Dutch Design Week, the Circular Value Center (CVC) presented the Remanufacturing Roadmap. With remanufacturing, SME manufacturing companies can start making money from their own products that have come to the end of their lives.

Not just reuse, but remanufacturing to the requirements and wishes of our time. This not only provides an interesting business case, it provides valuable information about the customer's use of the product and companies keep a grip on valuable raw materials. The roadmap provides insight into the opportunities and challenges companies encounter on the road to remanufacturing. A dozen companies collaborated on the creation of the roadmap, which has therefore become practical and accessible. The companies that participated are: Wemo, ATD, Hapert trailers, ASML, Vanderlande, EMtech, RE MADE in HOLLAND, IRS robotics, Bluetron and The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Niels van Olffen of Maaklos was enlisted to create the roadmap.

The Circular Value Center is an initiative of the Province of North Brabant and the Brabant Development Company and aims to future-proof the Southern Netherlands business community. The question of how to deal with raw materials, materials, components and products plays an increasingly important role in this. Strategic challenges include maintaining access to raw materials, developing new business models and increasing sustainability. Experience shows that thinking and working in cycles, the circular economy, can help enormously in achieving this. Companies have 3 important knobs they can turn: product design (''beginning of life''), life extension in combination with all kinds of services (''middle of life'') and reuse (''end of life'').

Remanufacturing is proving to be an excellent, tangible and approachable starting point for many companies on their circular journey. Retrieve the products you (once) made to see what state they are in and if you can still do something with them. That offers a perspective to start making money from the second-hand market, which often exists anyway. In addition, it provides information about use and post-use condition of products produced in the past, which in turn gives input to design and engineering of new products. And finally, it often turns out to be interesting not to sell products, but to own them from the start. This in turn offers very interesting opportunities for services in the field of maintenance, overhaul, supply of (used) spare parts and so on.

With the creation and reading of the roadmap, the journey is not yet finished, but just beginning. The Circular Value Center will develop activities to also get the roadmap applied (through meetings, research and projects) in practice. For example on November 30 in a meeting Business opportunities for remanufacturing, with MVO-Nederland in Driebergen at the Triodos bank.