DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY A TOOLKIT FOR POLICYMAKERS

DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY – A TOOLKIT FOR POLICYMAKERS • 123
stration effects for private owners, facility managers in industrial and commercial
real estate, and landlords.
• Setting up municipal access portals that provide information on public building
availability and matches users with providers. This could start out with public
buildings; private spaces could be added later, for instance in case a territory is
too small or not sufficiently densely populated to warrant a commercial intermediary.
3.4 Machinery
The potential for Danish businesses to engage in remanufacturing and
refurbishment is significant. Since this opportunity requires the development
of new capabilities, business models and technologies, capturing it could
take time, but by 2035, modelling suggests these practices could create an
estimated potential net value of EUR 150–250 million annually.
Opportunity:
Remanufacturing of components and new business models based on
performance contracts and reverse logistics.
2035 economic
potential:
EUR 150-250 million p.a. (plus additional potential in adjacent
sectors).
Key barriers:
Lack of capabilities and skills; imperfect information of existing
opportunities; unintended consequences of existing regulations
Sample policy
options:
Remanufacturing pilots and information campaigns; amendment
of existing regulatory frameworks; adoption of an overarching
government strategy.
The Danish machinery sector is characterised by the presence of several large
manufacturers of long-lived industrial products, such as Grundfos (pumps), Vestas (wind
turbines), and Danfoss (thermostats, heating and power solutions) and >1,000 parts
manufacturers and service providers supporting these industries. 218 Across the board,
these companies have adopted the most common efficiency measures, such as waste
reduction in production processes, light-weighting components and products, and waste
reduction and energy efficiency in production processes.
Danish machine manufacturers are also proficient in recycling and are increasingly
looking into designing for recyclability. Grundfos, for example, notes that around 90%
of the components inside pumps are recyclable. In the wind turbine industry, almost
all parts are recycled. The last remaining challenge is the rotor blades, which consist of
epoxy-covered composites. A number of possible uses for old blades are currently being
pursued, guided for example by the Genvind project. 219
By contrast, discussions with sector experts revealed that there is only a limited number
of remanufacturing or refurbishment activities. Remanufacturing and refurbishment
(Box 6) leads to higher value retention than materials recycling since a large part of the
added value of a product or component is maintained, and more steps along the value
chain are bypassed (c.f. Figure 1 in Part 1). Danish companies could thus exploit the
largely untapped potential in remanufacturing and refurbishment. In parallel, recycling
and efficiency optimisation is likely to continue to improve in the sector, as part of the
trajectory Denmark is already on.
218 According to Statistics Denmark, there were 26 companies with 250-plus employees in the machinery sector
in 2012, and just over 1,000 with fewer than 250 employees, of which half had 0–9 employees.
219 www.genvind.net