SHAPE funding granted!
Business Finland has granted 10 million euros in development funding for the Mirka SHAPE project in the challenge competition as well as 20 million euros to the ecosystem companies surrounding the project. This is a unique project and the first of its kind in Finland. The aim is to create a cross-industrial ecosystem to develop solutions for the remanufacturing and construction industries, contributing to a net carbon negative impact.
In the future Mirka’s surface finishing solutions and the SHAPE ecosystem can together decrease the carbon footprint of the European industry by 100 Mt, creating export opportunities worth several billions for the Finnish industry. In total, Mirka’s, Business Finland’s and the Finnish industry’s investment in developing net carbon-negative solutions will be around 200 M€ during the next five years.
In concrete terms, the Mirka SHAPE project will concentrate on four areas, which together enable net carbon-negative remanufacturing and construction solutions:
Sustainable material solutions in production - Usage of recyclable and bio-based raw materials, e.g. wood based replacements for plastic.
Repair, reuse, and remanufacturing solutions - Extending product lifetime, e.g. through innovative surface finishing solutions.
Boosting circularity - Finding new ways to utilize side products of manufacturing processes, e.g. utilizing waste that is created from surface finishing.
Intelligence throughout value chains - Developing measurement and analytic solutions for product lifecycle management.
- One development direction in the project can, for example, be to find new ways to turn the side products, meaning the waste of today’s ecosystem into raw materials of the future. On the other hand, it can be about extending the lifetime of a product by utilizing new and innovative repair methods. Mirka’s core competence in the ecosystem is the further development of surface finishing technologies. Put simply, the ecosystem aims to create remanufacturing and construction solutions that enable repairing a product so that it is no longer necessary to make a new one. This requires ecodesign throughout the entire value chain. The result is a durable good and a net carbon-negative manufacturing process, says Mirka’s Research and Development Director Mats Sundell.
Mirka is the driver of the project, and the surrounding ecosystem consists of tens of actors from small-scale industries to large corporations, research institutes, and universities. The launch event of the project will take place in the spring of 2023.
- Co-operation beyond industry borders is a natural part of Mirka’s corporate culture. We are now happy to invite all companies and research organizations that share our vision to take part in this development project and build up the complete ecosystem, Sundell says.