We’ve all heard of the 3Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle – but how many of us know of remanufacturing? Often confused with repair, and sometimes mistaken as plain old manufacturing, this ‘R’ has been gaining prominence amongst advocates of the circular economy, hailed for its ability to reduce strain on resources (whilst saving businesses money) AND provide security to the consumer.

But what exactly is it? According to Ben Walsh, Technical Consultant at the Centre for Remanufacturing and Reuse (CRR) and Senior Consultant at Oakdene Hollins, remanufacturing involves taking a product that has reached the end of its first life, performing a series of steps to bring it back up to ‘as new’ specifications, and providing the product with a warranty to match.

He explains: “We [the CRR] can be quite anal about the concept of remanufacture as people confuse it with material processes all the time. Recycling is purely material break down and recomposition, and reuse is about repurposing products or materials. Reuse and remanufacturing are basically two ends of a spectrum, but in reuse usually there’s very little work that’s gone on to make sure that it’s suitable for use, other than maybe some basic functionality testing. With remanufacturing, there are very highly-specified industrial processes undertaken to make sure a product is as good as new. (And in the middle, you have terms such as refurbishing and reconditioning, which again is performing a series of steps on a product, but not as far as remanufacturing).”

However, despite the remanufacturing industry being the same size as the recycling industry in 2005, Walsh estimates that it has only grown by 15-20 per cent, whereas the recycling industry has ballooned to around 300 per cent of what it was. The reason for this, Walsh tells me, is two-fold: a misconception/lack of understanding of what remanufacturing is, and a lack of government support.

He says: “One of the big arguments from manufacturers is that they think remanufacture will just cannibalise their current market. But we have absolutely no evidence of that happening. The fact is, and this has been proved time and time again, that actually it allows you to expand your market and target those who you weren’t reaching before – for example, those that couldn’t previously afford your product or didn’t see it as a part of their value chain. So, in the end, remanufacturing is a way to get close to your customers and produce more profit from [fewer] materials.”

In fact, Walsh says that a remanufactured product can deliver between two and three times the profit margins of a new product. That’s because, by and large (and particularly on the engineering end of things), most of the big components of a product, such as casings, can be reused with very little additional need for remediation. Indeed, Walsh explains that it’s usually the bearing parts or wear surfaces that need replacing, which are often a very small fraction of the overall value of a device.

Further to this, there’s often a shorter lead time for remanufacturing goods than there is in manufacturing from scratch, as a product usually can be remanufactured more locally than new goods (especially if the manufacturing supply chain extends abroad, to China, for example). This, in turn, means there is a better chance of security of supply.

But more often than not, the remanufacture of goods is easier said than done, as products are not usually designed for repair or remanufacture; most designers make products with economy and functionality in mind, but few think about ease of disassembly at end-of-life. It’s this, Walsh says, that will be “one of the key challenges for design over the next few years”.

Aside from the business case for remanufacturing, it’s also much better for the environment than buying new or recycling. Replacing a few small parts through remanufacturing, rather than mining for virgin materials (such as metal) or breaking down perfectly good materials for recycling, not only saves carbon, but also helps avoid resource depletion. Indeed, the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, has suggested that, globally, remanufacturing can save enough raw materials to fill 155,000 railroad cars forming a train 1,100 miles long.

But it’s the economic benefits that make remanufacturing most attractive to business, admits Walsh: “It’s become clear that if you can’t justify a change of business without an economic benefit, it’s not going to get done. You can be the greenest company in the world, but if you’re turning a loss, you’re not going to be the greenest very long because you won’t be in business very long. Everything we do has to make commercial sense. And I think that this is where our challenge lies. It’s telling people that remanufacturing has huge commercial benefits, but, also, is much better for the environment, through material savings and carbon – therefore it’s great for a CSR [corporate social responsibility] report.”

So why has government not done more to support it? When the CRR was set up in 2006, Defra awarded it funding from its Business Resource Efficiency and Waste (BREW) fund to find out more about remanufacturing, and quantify it. But after a few years, the money was folded into the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), which focuses more on recycling and reuse. Walsh comments: “The culture in industry is incredibly difficult to change. If you want to increase recycling rates, you build a recycling plant – that’s it. If you want to encourage remanufacturing, you have to change the hearts and minds of incumbent industries. It’s a much, much tougher sell.”

However, the tide may yet turn, as businesses are now calling on the UK government to back remanufacturing once again. In March 2014, the All-Party Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group (APSRG) released a report highlighting that the UK’s remanufacturing sector is valued at £2.4 billion, with the potential to increase to £5.6 billion.

‘Remanufacturing: Towards a Resource Efficient Economy’ called on government to take ‘urgent steps’ to improve UK remanufacturing, including: adopting an agreed definition of remanufacturing; establishing a government fund to explore ‘currently under-remanufactured industries’; setting up a cross-departmental committee, led by BIS and supported by Defra, to ensure there is ‘a cross-departmental collaboration when considering those policy areas where remanufacturing plays a key role’; and creating a ‘centre of excellence’, to identify products that have the ‘most potential’ for remanufacturing in the UK and ‘stimulate greater knowledge transfer and understanding about the practical application and potential of remanufacturing in the UK’.

The chair of the project that led to the report, MP for Meriden and former Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman MP, tells Resource: “At present, regulatory barriers hinder the uptake of remanufacturing. Of particular importance are the current lack of a globally-accepted legal definition of remanufacturing and, connectedly, the regulation surrounding the legal definition of waste. As it stands, the ‘Current Guidance on the Legal Definition of Waste’ does not mention remanufactured products, and thus they are not exempt from those products classified as waste. This is especially unhelpful to the uptake of remanufacturing, as it has negative consequences for market dynamics, consumer concepts and international trade. This is why one of the report’s key recommendations is that we need a globally-accepted definition of remanufacturing to overcome these hurdles.”

Walsh (unsurprisingly) welcomes the idea of a centre of excellence, concluding: “There is a real opportunity for a centre for excellence for remanufacturing, which would bring together pockets of excellence from across the UK (i.e. academics, practitioners, policy people, PR people, et cetera) to provide a very holistic picture of remanufacturing.

“Remanufacturing problems may be difficult, but they’re not unique, and often we [the CRR] can point people in the right direction to help them out. But, it’s been very much our experience that we can’t do it alone, because it takes everyone involved to do it – from looking at the supply chain, to managerial style, to product design and the production team.

“In order to boost remanufacturing on the level that we need, we have to bring together different pockets of expertise to ensure the message is disseminated as [widely] as possible. There’s a real opportunity for the UK to become the European leaders in remanufacturing, if only we grab this opportunity now.”