WIENERBERGER AG

Their core work

Wienerberger AG is the world's largest brick and clay roof tile manufacturer, operating hundreds of production plants across Europe. Their core manufacturing process involves energy-intensive industrial drying — green bricks and tiles must be dried before kiln firing, consuming enormous amounts of thermal energy. This operational reality drives their R&D interest: they participated in H2020 projects targeting waste heat recovery in industrial drying and advanced protective coatings for manufacturing equipment. They bring the perspective of a major industrial end-user, validating and deploying new energy and materials technologies at genuine factory scale.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Both H2020 projects launched in 2016, so there is no meaningful temporal shift within Wienerberger's EU project portfolio — the dataset is too narrow to trace a multi-phase evolution. What the keyword data does reveal is a decisive emphasis on thermal energy topics in their most substantial project: drying, dehydration, heat recovery, and next-generation refrigerants dominate their footprint. The PROCETS involvement (coatings) appears secondary and exploratory by comparison, given its smaller EC contribution of €160,562 versus €563,896 for DryFiciency.

Wienerberger's heavier investment in DryFiciency suggests their strategic R&D priority is reducing thermal energy costs in drying — a direction that aligns with EU industrial decarbonisation policy and points toward future partnerships in heat pump technology, low-GWP refrigerants, and process electrification.

How they like to work

Wienerberger participates exclusively as a consortium partner, never as a project coordinator — consistent with a large industrial company that joins research projects as an end-user and validation site rather than a research driver. Their 35 unique partners across 13 countries in only two projects indicates they joined well-connected consortia, not small specialist teams. This profile suggests they are most valuable to a consortium as a real-world industrial deployment partner who can test and validate technologies at production scale.

Wienerberger has connected with 35 unique consortium partners spanning 13 countries through just two projects, reflecting the large multi-partner consortia typical of IA (Innovation Action) funding schemes. Their network is genuinely pan-European, likely covering technology developers, universities, and fellow industrial end-users across Western and Central Europe.

What sets them apart

Wienerberger offers something rare in EU research consortia: the combined credibility of a global market leader and a real production environment for pilot and demonstration activities. Any project involving industrial drying, kiln processes, or heavy clay manufacturing can benefit from Wienerberger's operational scale — their factories are not lab simulations but genuine high-volume industrial sites. For technology developers needing an industrial reference customer to validate heat pump or coating innovations, Wienerberger represents a marquee end-user partner with pan-European reach.

Highlights from their portfolio

• DryFiciency
  The largest of Wienerberger's two H2020 projects (€563,896) and their most technically specific engagement, targeting waste heat recovery with advanced heat pump technologies including mechanical vapour recompression and next-generation low-GWP refrigerants — directly tied to decarbonising energy-intensive brick drying operations.
• PROCETS
  Demonstrates Wienerberger's interest in materials science beyond thermal processes, exploring electrodeposition and thermal spray coatings to protect manufacturing equipment — a secondary but distinct technology domain showing breadth of industrial R&D engagement.