EUROPEAN COMPOSIT RECYCLING TECHNOLOGY AS

Their core work

ECR Technology A/S is a Danish SME specialising in the recycling and end-of-life treatment of fibre-reinforced composite materials — a technically difficult problem that the plastics and manufacturing industries have struggled with for decades. Their work sits at the intersection of materials science and industrial process engineering: they develop and validate methods for breaking down, recovering, and reprocessing structural composites such as epoxy, polyester, and vinylester resin systems. In the ECOXY project they contributed practical recycling expertise to the development of bio-based 3R (recyclable, reshapable, repairable) composites for automotive and construction applications; in BIZENTE they are applying enzyme-based degradation (ligninases) to tackle thermoset composites that conventional recycling cannot handle. For a business or consortium, they bring hands-on industrial knowledge of what actually works when you try to recycle composite parts at scale.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first project (ECOXY, 2017–2020) ECR Technology focused on the materials-design side of the problem: developing bio-based resins and fibres with built-in recyclability, with flame retardancy and self-healing as additional performance targets for automotive and construction markets. By their second project (BIZENTE, 2020–2024) the focus shifted decisively toward the biological degradation route — specifically using engineered enzymes (ligninases) to disassemble thermoset composites that cannot be melted or dissolved by conventional means. This is a meaningful pivot: from "design better composites from the start" toward "solve the problem for the billions of tonnes of thermoset composites that already exist and have no recycling pathway."

ECR Technology is moving toward biotech-enabled recycling solutions — enzymatic and directed-evolution approaches — which positions them at the frontier of end-of-life treatment for structural composites in wind energy, aerospace, and automotive sectors.

How they like to work

ECR Technology has participated in both projects as a non-coordinating partner, consistently joining larger research consortia rather than leading them. This suggests they contribute specific industrial or process-validation expertise to consortia built around broader research goals — the "industrial reality check" role that applied SMEs typically fill. With 25 distinct partners across just 2 projects, they have been exposed to a wide range of collaborators rather than repeating the same network, which indicates openness to new consortium formations.

Over two projects ECR Technology has worked with 25 unique partners across 7 countries, a relatively broad reach for an organisation of their size and project count. No coordinator role has been taken, so their network is built through participation rather than consortium leadership.

What sets them apart

ECR Technology occupies a rare niche: a private company whose core business is composite recycling technology at a time when regulatory and market pressure (EU end-of-life vehicle directives, wind turbine blade disposal mandates) is making this capability commercially critical. Unlike university groups in the same space, they bring an industrial perspective — their value to a consortium is knowing what is feasible outside the lab. The move into enzyme-based recycling (BIZENTE) suggests they are tracking the leading edge of the field and are prepared to bridge biotechnology and industrial materials processing, a combination very few SMEs in Europe can offer.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ECOXY
  Largest single funding award (EUR 322,875) and the broader 3R composite framework — bio-based, flame-retardant, self-healing, and LCA-validated — makes this their most technically comprehensive project to date.
• BIZENTE
  Represents a genuine technical leap: applying directed-evolution ligninases to thermoset composite degradation is one of the very few credible pathways to recycling thermosets at industrial scale, a problem the sector has failed to solve for 30 years.