Mirka invests 200M € with the Finnish industry in net carbon negative solutions

Mirka’s aim is to create a cross-industrial ecosystem to develop solutions for the remanufacturing and construction industries, contributing to a net carbon negative impact. Business Finland has granted 10 million euros in development funding for the Mirka SHAPE project as well as 20 million euros to the ecosystem companies surrounding the project. This project is first of its kind in Finland.

Mirka-Shape-Ecosystem-logoIn the future Mirka’s surface finishing solutions and the SHAPE ecosystem can together decrease the carbon footprint of the European industry by 100 Mt, creating export opportunities for the Finnish industry. In total, Mirka’s, Business Finland’s and the Finnish industry’s investment in developing net carbon negative solutions will be around 200 M€ during the next five years.

– We want to shoulder our responsibility and contribute to further develop the circular economy. Thanks to the funding granted by Business Finland, we can now start the SHAPE project in cooperation with the Finnish industry and the research field. The project creates an excellent opportunity for the whole ecosystem to develop new innovative remanufacturing solutions, create new jobs and strengthen the competitiveness of the Finnish industry, says Mirka’s CEO Stefan Sjöberg.

– One development direction in the project can be to find new ways to turn the side products, meaning the waste of today’s ecosystem to raw materials of the future. On the other hand, it can be about extending the lifetime of a product by utilizing new and innovative repair methods. Mirka’s core competence is the further development of surface finishing technologies. The aim is to create solutions that enable repairing a product so that it is no longer necessary to make a new one. This requires ecodesign throughout the entire value chain, says Mirka’s Research and Development Director Mats Sundell.

Mirka is the driver of the project, and the surrounding ecosystem consists of tens of actors from small-scale industries to large corporations, research institutes and universities. The launch event of the project will take place in the spring of 2023.

Read more on Mirka’s home page.