Remanufacturing is critical for Circular Economies, extending product life, creating jobs and revenue streams, and reducing waste, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. The main challenges that need to be addressed for successful remanufacturing in an industrial value chain or, more appropriately, value cycle are related to process, design, and business models. To meet these challenges, RESTORE will offer sustainable by design remanufacturing process and materials along with supporting tools for digitalization of remanufacturing ecosystem or value chain. RESTORE is aiming to advance potential SoA cladding technologies including laser direct energy deposition, plasma transfer arc process for sustainable remanufacturing application. To increase the deposition rate for large scale applications, we are aiming to develop a novel hybrid process combining laser and PTA process. We are aiming to manufacture wire feedstock with recycled content and develop a wire feeding system coupled with auxiliary feeding system to transfer machining swarf/unused powder directly into the melt pool, this will pave the way to zero waste and low-cost remanufacturing technology. For digitalization, we are also aiming to develop RESTORE platform, which will offer digital technologies and tools, which are digital technologies to increase process automation, recipe book and simulation tools for product and process optimisation, decision support framework, ecoDESIGN framework, blockchain enabled digital product passport, digital marketplace, business model templates, and collaborative spaces that can help to facilitate and streamline the remanufacturing process, providing greater traceability, transparency, and efficiency. The digital collaborative space will bring all relevant actors of the remanufacturing domain under one umbrella to share data and leverage a decision support framework and supporting tool, guiding the optimal remanufacturing of industrial products and components.

The EC and national public officials are well aware of the economic importance and supply risk of Critical Raw Materials and are promoting solutions which are feasible, reliable and cost-effective to reduce this dependence. SALEMA addresses this concern for the CRM-reliant high performance Aluminium grades required in electrical vehicles. Changing the input materials required to produce these advanced alloys, SALEMA proposes a circular economy model using scrap metal as an alternative source of Critical Raw Materials and the substitution of CRM for commonly available alloying elements. These developments will be deployed in four industrial pilots (High Pressure Die Casting, Cold and Hot Sheet Stamping, and profile Extrusion), representing the most relevant processes in aluminium manufacture for lightweight automobiles. SALEMA puts together an industrially and user-driven consortium that represents the whole sector of aluminium in automotive applications, who will extensively work during 3 years to proof that the presentedmeasures are competitive, technically feasible and contribute towards circular economy strategies and sustainability goals. The project addresses in a coordinated and cooperative manner the key challenges in the different levels of the value chain: improving scrap classification and sorting systems to turn scrap into a valuable raw material; demonstrating the feasibility to substitute CRMs in alloying systems; developing recycled aluminium alloys with improved mechanical performance; optimizing High Pressure Die Casting, sheet metal Stamping and Extrusion processes in a timely and cost-efficient manner in order to ensure the adoption of the developed alloys. SALEMA will deliver 4 industrial pilots, validate the new developed Al alloys with 5 car-part demonstrations in 5 industrial case studies, which guarantees a prompt industrial deployment and take up.