Benoît Loicq, Director of R&D and European Regulatory Affairs at SEA Europe, presented three ways in which CirclesOfLife anchors circularity in European maritime manufacturing: practical tools that support decarbonisation, resource efficiency and competitiveness, material circularity across the ship lifecycle, including a blueprint for Ship Material Passport, and a bridge between industry experience and emerging EU policy, from the Circular Economy Act to the Industrial Maritime Strategy. Scaling these solutions, he said, will require regulatory clarity, clear data governance, stable policy framework and economic alignment across the value chain.

Jorinus Kalis, Manager Process Innovation at Damen Shipyards and coordinator of CirclesOfLife, complemented the policy perspective with practice. The project helps maritime manufacturing move from a largely linear model towards a more circular one, reducing the environmental footprint of shipbuilding, decreasing dependency on raw materials and unlocking greater value from material and waste streams. Among the results is the Shipyard Environmental Performance Index (SEPI), which lets yards identify environmental hotspots in their processes and points to the technologies and measures that can address them. 

European Commission representatives welcomed CirclesOfLife as a living proof that circularity and competitiveness can go together. Gabriel Mialocq (CINEA) congratulated the consortium, noting that it is not often that a successful project gets presented. He also added that the tools developed by the project, the Ship Lifecycle Passport and the Shipyard Environmental Performance Index, provide real value by favouring upcycling over recycling and cutting costs and energy use, with material information available from the start.

Dario Bazargan (DG GROW) noted that the CirclesOfLife project was cited in the EU Industrial Maritime Strategy, while Gael De Rotalier (DG ENV) praised circularity as the flagship of the current EU Commission mandate. We welcome this support and the recognition of the project’s alignment with the EU strategic policies. However, true circularity means end-of-life ships cannot continue being dismantled on beaches, harming workers, communities and coastal ecosystems. Information on materials present on a ship, including hazardous ones, is the necessary step towards safe and clean recycling and material upcycling. 

With a significant volume of ships reaching end of life in the coming decade, recyclers stressed that circularity cannot wait and that Europe must act now. Maintaining and expanding European capacity requires sufficient and predictable demand. Without the right market and policy signals, vessels will continue to be recycled in third countries, and Europe, deemed to become a net importer of scrap in five years, will lose this strategic asset.

The steel industry argued for connecting the value chain and recognising recycling facilities as strategic assets for securing secondary raw materials. CirclesOfLife covers much of the intelligence the sector needs. At a time when European steel faces a major competitiveness challenge, projects such as CirclesOfLife are essential to keep value in Europe and turn circularity into an industrial advantage. 

Shipowners underlined the value of reliable environmental information across the vessel lifecycle, supporting net-zero ambitions and sustainability reporting, and noted that materials recovered from ships often find a second life in other sectors, making cross-sector interoperability essential if Digital Product Passports are to reach their full circular potential. Shipyards, for their part, see the link between sustainability and competitiveness as increasingly direct, though reliable, comparable data on environmental performance remains hard to obtain. Ports, too, recognised the opportunity. With shipyards and terminals sitting side by side, an industry-wide approach is needed. 

Jaap Gebraad of the Waterborne Technology Platform highlighted the innovative aspect of the maritime sector and called for continued public research funding alongside private investment, and Antidia Citores, General Manager at Green Marine Europe, announced that the organisation will support further exploitation of the results through its certification scheme that will carry the project’s results forward.  Closing the discussion, MEP Jeannette Baljeu agreed that innovation needs a supportive policy framework.

Sustainability and competitiveness must indeed go hand in hand, while polluters must pay. CirclesOfLife tools will only deliver when no more European-owned ship end up beached at the expense of workers’ health and safety or the environment. 

You will find the CirclesOfLife booklet distributed to the participants here.
You will find the CirclesOfLife Press Release here.