Message from the Editors
This issue highlights how circular thinking is reshaping manufacturing. Through remanufacturing, repair, and smart design, we showcase innovations that extend product life, reduce waste, and strengthen industrial resilience. We hope these insights inspire you to rethink value creation and contribute to a more sustainable future.
Featured
Building a Circular Future through Additive Remanufacturing
The Add-reAM project is accelerating the Netherlands’ transition to circular manufacturing by integrating additive manufacturing with advanced repair and remanufacturing strategies. Backed by €6.8 million in national funding, the initiative aims to reduce waste, emissions and downtime while enhancing industrial competitiveness and resilience through digital innovation, sustainable design and cross-sector collaboration.
Lessons Learned
Designing for Repair
The EU’s Right to Repair policies are shifting product design towards modularity, disassembly, and long-term support. Recent laws on batteries, repair labels, and spare parts create opportunities, but gaps in affordability, software restrictions, and enforcement remain. Cristina Ganapini of the Right to Repair Europe coalition shares insights on how policy, design, and market forces can drive a truly circular economy.
Adaptive Law and Remanufacture in the Circular Economy
Adaptive law is key to advancing remanufacturing within the circular economy. It aligns with Safety and Sustainability by Design (SSbD) and the right to repair, emphasizing that dynamic, flexible regulation responsive to technological and social change is essential to scaling sustainable remanufacture across European industries. This discussion outlines pathways for embedding these principles into future European regulatory frameworks
Circular Care in Practice
Circular care promotes sustainability in healthcare by extending product lifecycles through reuse and remanufacturing. The High-Quality Medical Instrument Reuse project explores technical, regulatory, and design strategies enabling safe, cost-effective reprocessing. Collaboration among hospitals, manufacturers, and researchers reveals opportunities, challenges, and design principles essential for transitioning to a circular healthcare ecosystem.
Sustainability
How Simulation is Powering a New Era in Remanufacturing
Advanced simulation and material modelling are redefining remanufacturing in the packaging industry. By enabling the use of recycled aluminium and optimising forming processes, manufacturers can reduce waste, cut carbon emissions, and eliminate costly prototyping. These innovations support circular economy goals and offer a scalable, digital pathway toward more sustainable, compliant, and competitive packaging production.
AMC NU
AMC NU
Read more about what’s happening with the Circular Manufacturing Program and our Advanced Manufacturing Centre, and discover the many innovation topics we can help you with to support your business.
Technology & Innovation
What Europe Can Learn from China’s Tech Ecosystem
Salomé Sanchez, Assistant Professor in the UT’s Advanced Manufacturing and Sustainable Products and Energy Systems research group, reflects on a week-long China Tech Tour across Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Kunshan. She highlights China’s speed, scale, and openness in advancing circular economy and remanufacturing, offering valuable lessons for Europe’s sustainable industrial transformation.
ReManufacturing for Good Extending Component Life Through Hybrid Additive Manufacturing
Hybrid additive manufacturing by f3nice is giving high-value industrial components a second life. Using recycled metal powders and precision repair, the EU-funded 3DoP project delivers cost, time and environmental savings while maintaining performance. This circular approach shows that in many cases the most sustainable part is the one already in service.
How refurbishment Creates Value for Business and the Earth
Innoboost explores how refurbishment, illustrated by Philips’ Circular Edition, drives sustainability and business value. By restoring products to original quality, reducing CO₂ emissions, and extending equipment lifespans, refurbishment proves that circularity and profitability can coexist. This approach shows how companies can integrate circular thinking into operations for lasting ecological and economic impact.
Enabling Safe and Efficient Battery Disassembly through Digital Battery Passport
NextGen High-Tech, through its Smart Industry S105 program, advances safer and smarter manufacturing with the Digital Battery Passport. Developed by the University of Twente, this prototype transforms compliance into innovation—enabling efficient, data-driven battery disassembly, reducing waste, improving safety, and accelerating circular manufacturing to strengthen the resilience and competitiveness of Dutch industry.
Flexible Remanufacturing using AI and Advanced Robotics for Circular Value Chains in EU Industry
The RENÉE EU-funded project advances flexible, AI-driven and robotic remanufacturing to strengthen Europe’s circular value chains. By improving resource efficiency, reducing emissions and creating safer, data-driven production, RENÉE shows how remanufacturing can transform industries from e-mobility to appliances and robotics into sustainable, human-centric systems combining innovation, competitiveness and environmental responsibility.
Giving Old Lead-Acid Batteries a Second Life
The ReLAB project, a collaboration between Riwald Recycling and the Fraunhofer Innovation Platform at the University of Twente, explores reusing discarded lead-acid batteries for energy storage. By developing and testing a decision-tree framework, the study shows that nearly half of salvaged cells can be safely reused, creating economic and environmental value.
The importance of choosing a Metal Additive Manufacturing Service provider
Choosing the right metal additive manufacturing (AM) service provider goes beyond cost. Guaranteed demonstrates how wire-based WAAM technology enables large-scale, high-quality, and sustainable metal part production and repair. Combining industrial expertise, process control, and digital warehousing, Guaranteed delivers efficient, certified, and low-carbon solutions that extend asset life and reduce operational costs.
Recycling and repair of thermoplastic composites at TPRC
The ThermoPlastic Composites Research Center (TPRC) advances circular manufacturing by developing efficient recycling and repair methods for aerospace-grade thermoplastic composites. Through low-shear mixing, detailed material characterization, and fusion bonding repair techniques, TPRC enables high mechanical recovery with lower energy use, reduced CO₂ emissions, and sustainable lightweight solutions for future mobility and aerospace applications.
Smarter Hands for Modern Industry
Saxion University’s Smart Mechatronics and Robotics group, together with TValley partners Riwo, Viro, and Voortman Steel Machinery, developed an AI-enhanced robotic bin picking demonstrator. Combining 3D vision, modular design, and deep learning models such as FoundationPose, the project advances flexible, adaptive automation for industrial environments, bridging robotics research and practical manufacturing applications.
