Upcycle: Upcycling Wooden Building Products

Vyrk AS is a leading provider of interior building products in the Norwegian building sector and has since the 1980s exported high-end wooden interiors globally. Products from Vyrk can be witnessed in buildings as diverse as the Library in Alexandria, the Norwegian Opera House, and in airports, hotels, schools and educational institutions across the world.

Vyrk is seeking partners to bring re-cycled wooden building materials to market scale. We would welcome dialogue with partners across the entire value circle, for instance in the following:

1.) Architecture and building design for re-usable interiors

2.) Product design for re-usability (non-destructive mounting and dismounting)

3.) Reverse logistics: Demolotion and retrival of high-value building materials

4.) Product passport technologies for high-value retrival, logistics and reusal of building materials

5.) Project management, policy development and dissemination

Our role:

Vyrk and our R&D partner NTNU are seeking to establish a test-site for state of the art re-manufacturing technologies. We plan to offer project partners the oppurtunity to test, refine and develop manufacturing processes at our four manufacturing facilities, with four specialised nesting machines, formating saws, and four dedicated industrial painting lines. In addition we seek to develop sorting and nivelating technologies in a purpose built test cell, and are investigating further use of machine learning in post-paint processing and paletisation.

The Upcycle project will deliver a key strategic priority for Vyrk AS. Building upon decades of experience in delivering mounting systems that allow non-destructive removal of products, Vyrk seeks to transition its entire product portfolio the re-usable and up-cyclable products. Having invested heavily in R& D the last decade Vyrk AS has a series of cirkular building products ready to enter the market. Among these, Vyrk has developed a new interior building system for the new Norwegian Cabinet Quarters that allows radically simplified installation and dis-installation of interior wall panels, ceilings, doors and floors. As such, advancing manufacturing processes that would allow successful re-manufacturing of products as they return from customers after use will set the stage rapid market expansion.

Background

Despite significant investments in R&D to develop circular solutions market uptake of recycled, wooden building products has been slow and the majority of wooden building materials are still being burned after first usage. Lack of cost competitiveness is a key barrier against widespread adoption of circular products and solutions, driven by two main factors: Firstly: Manufacturing technologies are ill adjusted to handling the wider tolerances created from reused raw materials. Secondly: Recycling building materials introduce (often) prohibitive cost from (non-destructive) demolition at building sites, transportation to recycling facilities, sorting and quality control that significantly exceed the market prices for “virgin” raw materials from forests. As a result, circular building products must be priced at a significant premium compared to linear products, hindering widespread adoption in a building sector that is already facing significant cost challenges.

2. Proposed Solution:

In Upcycle we wish to apply state-of-the-art remanufacturing technologies to upcycle wooden building materials at scale. In order to achieve this goal, the project seeks to drive new product- and process innovation that significantly lower processing costs and adds product markup value to reclaimed building materials. The project seeks to establish partnership across the value circle with architects, builders, renovation agencies and waste facilities to collaborate to bring circular technologies to scale. As part of the project, we aim to establish a remanufacturing test-site where new processing technologies can be tested and developed, and we will be investigating new computer vision systems and machine learning models that can handle the wider material tolerances typically created by recycled raw materials. By developing a systematic approach to repurposing these panels, we will create a high-quality product that not only meets industry standards but also contributes positively to environmental sustainability.