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Ilkay Özkisaoglu

Since 04/2021 203 Episoden

#198 Metstrade Panel of JEC with Circularity in Composites: From Vision to Action – Join the Conversation!

13.01.2026 33 min Staffel 5 Episode 156

Zusammenfassung & Show Notes

What does true circularity in composites look like? How do we move from ambition to implementation? This exclusive LinkedIn Live-on-Tape session, hosted by Alexander Guillet (JEC), brings together a powerhouse panel of innovators and industry leaders who are shaping the future of sustainable composites.

Meet the Panelists:

* Marina Palumbo Cardella – European Boating Industry (EBI): Advocating for a greener marine sector and driving the roadmap for end-of-life boats.

* Raphael Pleynet – EUCIA: The architect behind the European Circular Composites Alliance (ECCA), uniting 170+ members to accelerate circularity.

* Guillaume Perben – Composite Recycling: Scaling up technologies to recover glass and carbon fibers and close the loop.

* Fabio Bignolini – nlcomp by Northern Light: Pioneering thermoplastic composites for next-gen sailing boats.

* Norbert Sedlacek – Innovation Yachts: A legend in ocean racing, now leading the charge for fully recyclable yacht design.

Europe is on the brink of a paradigm shift. With the Circular Economy Act expected in 2026, the pressure is on to rethink design, production, and end-of-life strategies for composites. From marine to wind energy, from startups to global OEMs, the message is clear: sustainability is no longer optional—it’s the new competitive edge.

What You’ll Learn:

* How regulatory frameworks like the Circular Economy Act will reshape the industry.
* Why collaboration across the entire value chain is critical.
* Real-world examples of recycling technologies and thermoplastic innovations.
* How alliances like ECCA are creating momentum for systemic change.

This isn’t just another panel—it’s a front-row seat to the future of composites. Hear candid insights, bold visions, and practical steps from those who are making it happen. If you care about sustainability, innovation, and the business opportunities they unlock, you can’t afford to miss this.

* Join us at JEC World 2026 in Paris and visit the Circularity Village to see these innovations up close.
* Sign the ECCA Declaration at <https://www.eucia.eu> and become part of Europe’s most dynamic circularity movement.
* Press “Participate” now to secure your spot for this livestream and be part of the conversation that will define the next decade of composites.

The race toward circularity has started. Will you be in the lead—or left behind?

YouTube Episode: https://youtu.be/9PCea1YdT5Y

Transkript

Welcome to this Session dedicated to sustainability. This session is brought to you by JEC, the association that promotes Composites worldwide and that organizes the famous global event JEC World 2026. See you in March in Paris at JEC World. If you want to visit us on our booth, there is the stand number. Today to fuel the debates, we are really glad to rely on a really prestigious panel. So, Maria Palumbo Cardella from EBI (European Boating Industry), hello. Thank you for being here. Raphael Pleynet from Eucia, our partner, Guillaume Perben from Composite Recycling. Fabio from NL.com. And a Norbert Sedlacek, a legend, but also the voice of innovation. Maybe if you want to introduce yourself in a few words, even if I guess that our audience perfectly knows you, but enough to, in a few words, introduce yourself and your organization. Maybe, Maria, if you want to start. Good morning everyone. First of all, thank you very much for having me on this panel with all these really excellent people. I work for the European boating industry, so we represent the European recreational sector and our members are the national associations of the marine recreational industry across the member states. We cover the entire industry chain, let's say so from marinas, touring sectors, dealers, shipyards, manufacturers and we represent 32 companies across 22 member states at the moment. I'm Fabio from an alternate composite. We are a startup from Italy. We are working on a new composite material, basically thermoplastics. We are prototyping sailing boards to prove that thermoplastic is a solution for the future. And thank you for inviting us. -Thank you. You Guillaume recently awarded the congratulations. Thank you very much. We are very honored that the Boat Builders Award was awarded to Beneteau and and our partners. So, Guillaume, I'm from Composite Recycling, a Swiss startup that has developed a process to recycle glass and carbon fiber based composites that we can recover. We work with our partners here. And we're very happy to be here in this panel. Thank you. Raphael and Norbert also they're also recently awarded with the very prestigious prize, the Kaplan Prize. That's it for congratulations also. -That was personal. But regarding the business and the democracy still 2009 did. They won the globe in 2008, 2009 and then decided was my partner that we want to go really in sustainability and stop the waste of material what racing is. Of course, because you always have to be in the last few percentage. And we started to develop stone fibers which are fully recyclable, and a typical epoxy matrix, which is also fully sustainable and recyclable. And, now since 16 years, we got a few awards on the way. Also the Ocean Tribute Award in 23 for our prototypes. And we do just product development. That means we develop boats, catamarans, monorails, but no serial production. Yes. Thank you. We'll come back to this. We have decided to start from the regulation level. So I turn to you, Marina, could you tell us what are the EBI's current priorities and give us an update of your invariant roadmap? I refer to the Navigation Tomorrow program. -Yeah, exactly. That one is our manifesto for this European Mandate. At the moment we have different interesting topics on it. And we are trying every day to advocate for those, but most importantly, in terms of circularity, we have another roadmap, which is, the roadmap for end of life boats and it's an ongoing project. Let's say it started a few years ago. We had a big event organized also with the EU Commission and like co-organized with your commission and us and we brought together different industries also to really, address the issue of the marine sector. And at the moment there are some developments because we are joining forces also with Raphael and other industries through which we have a smaller working group and we're trying to open up the possibility of revisiting the roadmap to include also composite materials. So this will make a real difference because, we, I mean, we are encouraging, let's say, other sectors to join forces with us. So this is very important. -What kind of sectors, for example? Well, we have together with the boating industry, we also have a wind Europe, for example. Uh, and then other stakeholders mainly working with composite materials. -And what can you tell us about the Circular Economy Act? Why it is so important to you? Yeah, actually, I mean, Raphael knows probably better than me. We're working together also with this smaller working group, which we call a circle, which with the weird name. But yeah, we're very active. We have a joint position paper in that it comes from a previous one that was mainly on the Waste Framework Directive. And now it's like we're pushing for the Circular Economy Act, which is expected next year in 2026. And I mean, we're already seeing a very good science. And like in the consultations that the different associations participated to, we saw that, you know, in some of these questions you need to put some takes, yes or no. There were also mentioned fiberglass. So like it's already a good sign that our industry and composite in general really take into account. So we're pushing mainly for having specific waste quotes, that will facilitate also the dismantling phase. So the end of life process. -Would you like to add something, Raphael, because you work together as Marina mentioned? I mentioned first you were mentioning the Circular Economy Act. This is an initiative from the European Commission. And as you mentioned, there were the survey opening from August to the early November. And when you look at the objective, they would actually to help to develop the secondary raw material market, because all of us we are mentioning sustainability sometime recycling or so the MDF at us. But what do we do at the end? You know, and we need to have a market. And we know today there is bias, there is difficulties. And when you see that the European Commission is, first of all, listening. All of us, all the industries saying, do you share? What are the different assessments? Do you agree or not? Because there were different type of questions. Took it very seriously this survey because it was an opportunity somewhere to feed the European Commission on what is the the two day situation and what we expect from the regulatory framework. Okay. So that's the first thing. And the second at Eucia here over the years, you know, we were convinced that we had to advance the circularity of composite material. And one way to do it and to accelerate, it's to join all the value chain, all the stakeholders together, not just saying the little composite and the three the from the the raw material producer to the OEM, but also including recyclers, waste management, the Commission as well. So we launched this initiative back at JEC in partnership with JEC earlier this year, And we are now on what we call the operational phase since the end of August 2025. We have different working groups and we are already working what to call the analysis. What do we want to do? And we have our first General assembly on December 4th in Brüssel in the presence of the European Commission, with at least two directories. And it shows for them the importance of such initiative to listen and then to develop the future policy regulations. -And I know that it is growing fast. How many members do you have right now? -Well, we launch it, you know, at JEC in March 2025. You know, we got something like 70 companies saying, okay, we are interested. We launched the Alliance back in July. It was 100. And today we have more than 170 members. It's free of charge to enter what we need from the people. It's the energy, the knowledge, the brain. And in order to give away, it's going to work. And Apple is doing a great job. Like we they were always invited since I know in every discussion and that for from an FBI side, let's say we totally support it. And EPR is a good system for that. What we want to remember is also that this system can also not be good for other member states. So if we see it in a european perspective, as for other million things like there are some aspects that can be different to handle depending on the government, on the local authorities and so on, but for sure there is like, it's still, I think a benchmark. Maybe a reaction from the people working on this also. And Norbert, if you want to start because you have a lot of experience, as you were mentioning. So you have seen a lot of things evolving, changing, sometimes with deception and sometimes with huge progress and successes. -I mean, I think for the industry we have a different impact. We say we start with the beginning. The beginning of a boat is a design, a construction, a prototype molds, all this stuff. And our consensus that we say, okay, we stay with all the materials really a 100% recyclable and sustainable. We don't accept the clients who say, could we not do a little bit of carbon here? And no, that's the first thing. That means we use materials, what we recycle and reuse for next constructions, indoor. That's the next point because for recycling, the problem is the transport. Big companies needs a volume, needs a mass to start with new products. I know that from our partners 3Acomposite, so that means we have really no waste, no leftover from composite production, just of course, cleaning paper and stuff like that. Yeah, but no material. We do our own matrix. We do our own glues, structural or fillers, whatever it is. And of course, the problem is you end up not with the cheapest product because it's manpower impact. And the moment that you have manpower impact and less automatism, it costs money. And we all have to earn money when we work for months and have to pay our bills. And finally, what the idea behind is, is that when big producers, big players on the market and I also spoke nearly 15 years ago with the Benetto group, for example, would start to do a similarly more or less similarly concept to say, see what we produce from now on. Day zero is fully recyclable and sustainable. We would not end up because in the meantime, I'm 16 years in the recycling business. That means in charter, no boat will survive for 16 years. We have three generations of charter boats now with the cheap built boats, which is coming back since we started it. So that means we think, I think the first step, not very important, don't produce new materials, new pleasure craft, which are absolutely not sustainable. And then think about what you're doing was existing boats with old boats what you do really super cool and find a way to recycle them, bring materials back in the production circle and that together will help. But somebody has to move and that's what you do. And that's what we do and they keep on going. -We all definitely know that now. They want proof, they want a demonstration. And not only words are saying we are going to try to do this I don't know perfectly at what time, but we will manage to cope with this challenge. -We are like prototyping a sailing boat. We are from a background of sailing. We are passionate sailors. We start from small dinghies, basically from an optimist. Then we prototype some sport boats. Seven meters, nine meters. Now we have a offshore boat. It's like ten metres and half in production. That will be ready to sail in 2026. Our goal is basically to push the market and to validate these materials. We was lucky to exhibit at JEC Worlds with our boat. We was lucky to win an Italian championship with one of our boats. And also we have a project with the shipyard in Italy, Cantieri Paldo. The boat is selling in Poland, we try to do our best to demonstrate that these materials are the solution. And of course, about regulation. I need to say that without regulation, the industry is not ready to switch to new material. So we need regulation. We need activities like this one you was mentioning. We will join also in December. We need to push a lot on this side because otherwise it will be really difficult to switch to new material. We are working with examples in the recitals. In many years we meet, I think at JEC 3 or 4 years ago we start to send in some samples to test everything. So we need to push a lot to demonstrate that we are ready to switch to materials. -I mean, from our perspective, we we've developed the process. We know it works. We can reuse the glass fibers. We work with orange, Corning, and around this we take the production scraps from Beneteau. Veolia is managing them with us for the resin. We work with Arkema on the helium resin. We work with Total as well for the resin. So we have avenues of reusing the carbon and the glass that we recover from the composites. We start with production scraps, we scaling up volumes, and we will move to the end of life at some point. But we need to start somewhere. But that's technology, and it's easy to fall in love with your technology and think the problem is fixed. But this is a constant discussion with nodes like composites with the end users of the byproducts of the recycling and in this frame. And that's why we basically get recognized this because we work together and because the producers of the waste, the managers of the waste, the reuses of the byproducts, they are around that technology. But this is the circle. And this is why the European Alliance that the UK is, is. And we're very proud to be part of this and come to the event on the 4th of December 2025 in Brussels. This is key. And this is why it's not just us, you know, thinking about recycling. It's it's everybody. And we need everybody in those alliances because the more we have the full value chain in these kind of discussions with the European Commission, the more powerful it is and the more consistent and complete the discussions are. So this is really a full, full value chain that that we bring together. And how do you work day to day together. I mean on some projects because you got day. -To day, you know, I mean. And you know, you were telling me that it was not a happy encounter. Everything is okay. It's perfectly match. It's a lot of dialogue. It's a lot of tests. It's a lot of. I mean, we cannot develop a technology in our garage with closed windows. We need to talk to the people who will use the recycled products, and we need to talk to the people who actually built the boats, because the if you tell an operator, oh, you need to buy tons of new tools, change your procedures and everything because it's recycled, it's never going to work. And but this is a discussion we need to constantly talk and exchange. When we started in in 2017 to develop a special type of electro engine was the first one in in any mockup. I crashed one time on the pontoon because the display showed unknown error, so I was not able to go in reverse. And even my friends then said, yeah, but why? Why are you using this shit? You know, I'm going to a diesel engine. But exactly what you say. How will you develop something if you don't try to it use it practically? Of course there comes error. They break something. There are problems, no discussion. But otherwise you have no chance to end up successfully. That's that's a very important point. I think what people have to understand in these days, because in our life everything works just on pushing a little button or reaching the smartphone, but in development it's different. Trial and error sometimes is necessary. -I'm listening to entrepreneurs. And congratulations for what you are doing, what you are trying because you push the limits and what we are once we prepared with you and Philip a scheme we know. At Eucia here we have been asked what volume we are speaking about at the end of life of composite material. Okay. So we develop a model in 2018, I was not part of Eucia at that time. But then we updated last year just to tell you, in the year 2025 we generate and we are able to identify 228 kilotons of composite materials. I can develop how we calculated it, but that's 228. So we know where are the volumes. Sometimes it's not so easy to locate, especially in the boat industry because the boat is produced in Europe can go somewhere else and so on. So but okay, the model says something. We and thanks to all of you. There is technologies working now, but how to move the waste to the recyclers and then to make a market that's really the central where we have to do or and to work together. And we will not solve it in our, each of us in our garage. I agree with you. We need to be all together. That's that's where. So again, thank you for what you are doing because that's really the the essence. Yes. It's possible to recycle a boat, a wind blade. It's thanks to all the work has been done on this recycling technologies. Okay. So. But then it's the story. How to move it from left to the right. Oh. Thank you. It's impossible to exhaust the subject in 30 minutes. And I see that the time is already is already running. So maybe if you have questions... -Trailer: How do we connect you with stories within the composites and sustainable materials industry? We are on the ground to find the facts. We examine big, innovative ideas. We let diverse perspectives on technology and sustainability, emerge and ignite conversations that matter most to bring you the composites and sustainable materials world. Stay informed. Stay connected. Stay inspired. From our online studios in Germany covering events and corporates from France, Italy, UK, Central Europe and many more European regions, join us for creating sustainable value With composites360onTour, Composites Lounge Engineering Talks and Composites Lounge End user panels hosted by Ilkay Özkisaoglu on LinkedIn, YouTube and your preferred podcasts. -My name is Flores and I represent the company RST5. We have a replacement of solvents in the production. I bought this company two years ago because I'm passionate about recycling and having a better, cleaner world. But what I'm experiencing is a lot is resistance for the workforce when they are cleaning their tools. Now, with solvents like acetone, we have a bio sustainable product to replace it. But there's a lot of resistance because they're not used to working with that. And you just mentioned mentioned regulation and I agree, but do you also work on motivation motivating the people to transition to a cleaner process? Thank you. -Thank you. Who wants to answer? I mean what I have experienced is the same as you. The guys come. They work one week and they went away because they say this material is shit. Yeah, it's too hard and I can't handle that. And it doesn't clean. But then you have to change your team. That's it. I mean, either you stick to proper materials or you stuck to a guy who says no I have now, polyester since 20 years. That goes so easy. And your epoxies are... I need. Okay, then you change the guy and you don't change the material. Because otherwise, of course, you know it's the one and only way, believe me. Because. Or, for example, to cut stone, stone fibers, you cannot use the same tools as for glass fiber, for example. Okay. It is much more harder. You have to sharpen it in half the time. You have to use proper drills, you know, from cobalt and so on. But that is something that you have to dictate to your team and then teach them how to use that and go for it. That means there is a vision and you have to follow your vision. It's like a race. There is a starting line and a finish line. That's it. You also mentioned like how you push actually people, clients, consumers to approach this new transition, let's say. And I mean from what I can see on a European level, I mean, it's quite a even a political issue. Let's say. So from sustainability we pass through competitiveness. So there is also this switch. But the the content let's say that we were pushing also in the years before, it's always there. We in EBI, we have this industry funded project. So really just like it's the shipyards that are paying for it, um, to develop an LCA tool. So from the not just considering the use phase, but from the production to the end of life. And this is really a good sign that the marine industry is really moving forward. And then on a more let's say local level, we also work with the EU funded projects, and also Norbert and I are working together on that with other people in the consortium, which is called techno. And it's basically, it's like it's it tries to push people joining the blue economy sector and to also encourage them to use the sustainable materials also. There are some training courses specifically on how to use this new composite and how to really use them in shipyards. And actually next week, I think there is a training seminar on that at the Norbert's shipyard in France. So what I can say is that there are a lot of steps that we're doing for that. I will give you a final word to to each of us and maybe if you can also underline the positive change that we can expect in the years to come, because we all know the problems, but we also have, uh, prospects that are quite positive sometimes. So maybe, Raphael, if you want to start. -Well, just to conclude and also on what has been said to your question. I think we are in a paradigm Change. So it will take some time. And to the person Who has Resurrected to use a new process. I think I like this initiative to Educate, to repeat, to educate, to demonstrate the value why we are doing that. You know, what is the the main focus and it will take time. But that's why we need to have the energy of everyone to repeat and repeat again. And I'm sure this person will change his mind, his perception. -That's absolutely right. Because remember, we needed 1 or 2 generations to end up where we are in a consumed society, which just gets cheap stuff to throw it away half a year later, and it will need another 1 or 2 generations to go back to quality products. And then your car is again your car and not the car for 24 months, and then you get the next one, you know, and I think recyclability, sustainability is very close to respect materials, produce quality, keep it, use it for a longer time and get to put some personality and stuff what we do and and see it as ours and not as something what you just consume as long as it's new and then you throw it away. I think that's one of the keys. -I really like Nobert's approach is it's really strong in pushing on on new materials, and I think we need to people like this and we need to work together to push the industry. That is the main topic, and I think we need more initiative to work together and push on new materials. -I would like to give my speak time to Raphael. We need to get together, everybody at Metstrade should join the alliance. Maybe you could remind us how to join the Alliance. -You go on the Eucia website, EUCIA.EU And then you have all the explanation how to join the alliance. You have to sign the declaration first. And because in signing the declaration, you share the vision. Yes. I'm ready to commit. And then the rest is easy. And see you in Brüssel in that case. -EBI is a member of the Alliance. Absolutely. And he is a member. And he's also sharing one of the working groups. So that's a great group. Good. Yeah. I'd like to thank our partner because we work together in order to have such a huge panel. And I like also to thank the Metstrade organizers because it was quite easy to and and smooth. So thank you very much and see you in JEC World 2026, of course. So see you in Paris. Bye bye. Thank you.