With FIP-Mirai@ICC, Germany and Japan join forces to recycle composites

In the heart of the Japanese pavilion at JEC World 2025, the German and Japanese Fraunhofer IGCV and Innovative Composite Center (ICC) institutes announced their collaboration, which was officially signed the week before the show.

The main focus of this close cooperation, with the sharing of results and research, is the recycling of carbon fibre composites.

“ICC is the largest research institute in Japan, and we have many partners, between 50 and 100, from universities and companies, who call on our services and use our equipment. This agreement with Fraunhofer IGCV will enable us to make reciprocal use of our platforms to approach companies and promote their advances in terms of recycling carbon fibre composites“, said Kiyoshi Uzawa, Director of the ICC Japanese Composites Innovation Centre, who is also President of Sampe Japan and a member of the JEC Innovation Awards jury.

“Fraunhofer IGCV has been working for 12 years on the recycling of carbon fibre composites. But it needs more visibility in our industry. With the ICC, we have found a very strong partner that will enable us to raise our respective profile in both countries“, enthused Klaus Drechsler, Director of the German research institute and Chair of Carbon Composites at the Technical University of Munich.

Working together for a more sustainable future

This collaboration bears the symbolic name of FIP-Mirai@ICC, “Mirai” meaning future in Japanese. It will initially run for five years (2025-2030), with a budget of two million euros. It will organise exchanges of researchers between Kanasawa in Japan and Augsburg in Germany, where the two research centres are located, and explore possible applications and outlets for their work.

“We are only at the beginning of this collaboration, so we don’t yet have sufficient visibility of the partnerships we will be able to forge within this framework. We will evolve according to the wishes of our members to access a broader portfolio of skills and research”, explains Nobuyuki Odagiri, professor at the ICC and vice-president and technical director at Toray Composite Materials America. “Initially, we are targeting the construction and infrastructure market, where there is a strong need. The automotive industry is also a relevant market, but for the moment the volume is too large. Aerospace is also one of our long-term objectives, but it is more complex at the moment because of the expected performance“, he continued.

“We are focusing on thermal recycling, but we are also very attentive to other technologies, and this collaboration will enable us to expand our networks,’ explains Jakob Wölling, head of the sustainable composites department at Fraunhofer IGCV. FIP-Mirai@ICC brings together the expertise of the two partners to offer a ‘one-stop shop’ experience for the institutes’ contacts. It combines, explains M. Wölling, Fraunhofer IGCV’s automated fibre placement (AFP), advanced pultrusion, fibre patch placement, pyrolysis, recycled product quality assurance and wet lamination technologies with ICC’s non-destructive evaluation (NDE), moulding, RTM and continuous double belt press capabilities.