BDI & BCG Study: Where Circularity Pays Off

What is the economic potential of circularity?

The Federal Association of the German Industries (BDI) asked Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to answer that for German industry. The report’s authors, Claas Oehlmann of the BDI’s Circular Economy Initiative and Alexander Meyer zum Felde of BCG, walk through the findings, with Nadine Braun of E.ON bringing the view from a company perspective.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• What the report found: in five sectors covering most of German industry, circular business models could double annual value creation, from 60 to 125 billion euros, by 2045.
• Whether that number survives cannibalisation. If a car gets refurbished, that’s one new car not sold, so does the potential still hold once you subtract the lost sales?
• What companies can do today, without waiting for new regulation, and what still holds them back.

Besides exploring the macroeconomic impact of the circular economy, the episode also looks at where circularity pays off for a company.

This is the second episode of the IFAT Munich 2026 series, recorded live at the fair.

Video Impression

People

Claas Oehlmann, Managing Director of the Circular Economy Initiative, Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-claas-oehlmann-83355853/

Nadine Braun, Head of Circularity and Environment, E.ON
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadine-braun-eon/

Alexander Meyer zum Felde, Global Director of Circular Economy, Boston Consulting Group
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-meyer-zum-felde-b10703164/

Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/

Chapters

0:00 Intro: the BDI and BCG study
1:57 Claas Oehlmann (BDI): doubling value to 125 billion
3:40 The policy gap: EU vs national
9:43 Alexander Meyer zum Felde (BCG): the economic case
13:54 The five sectors, and who leads
15:54 Levers companies can use now
24:55 What is holding companies back
27:50 Nadine Braun (E.ON): the energy sector
33:26 Wait for regulation, or start now?
36:12 Outro

About

IFAT is the world’s leading trade fair network for environmental technologies. It focuses on water, wastewater, waste, recycling and circularity, bringing together companies, innovators and industry professionals to present solutions for resource efficiency and sustainable infrastructure.

IFAT Munich is the flagship event of that network and the most important meeting place for the sector. It takes place every two years in Munich and showcases technologies and services for water, wastewater, waste and raw materials management, with the 2026 edition featuring around 3,400 exhibitors from about 60 countries.

Further Links

Link to the study “Wachstum, Wettbewerbsfähigkeit und Resilienz” from BDI and BCG: https://bdi.eu/de/specials/industry-spotlight-circular-economy-studie
IFAT: https://ifat.de/en/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Intro: the BDI and BCG study

Nadine Braun: All circular economy strategies will pay off on resilience and sustainability in the energy sector.

Patrick Hypscher: My name is Patrick Hypscher and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models. Welcome back to our IFAT special. IFAT is the world’s leading trade fair for environmental technologies. In the first episode of this series, we looked at circular sovereignty. Now we turn to economics. And there is a question that is relevant for many of you working in companies. And this is about the economic potential of circularity. At the same time, this question is also valid on a state level. Therefore, the Federal Association of the German Industries, the BDI, asked its members, companies and associations, and the Boston Consulting Group to come in with an answer to the question: what’s the economic potential of circularity? There has been a report on that with many key insights. We will share the link to this report in the show notes, but we will have in this episode now background conversations with the leading authors of that report. That is foremost Claas Oehlmann, Managing Director of the Circular Economy Initiative of the Federation of German Industries. This is also Alexander Meyer zum Felde, Global Director of Circular Economy at BCG, and Nadine Braun, Head of Circularity and Environment of E.ON. We kick off this conversation with Claas, providing us with the key results of this report. I’ve here now Claas Oehlmann, managing director of the Circular Economy Initiative of the BDI. And Claas, yeah it’s really great to have you here on the podcast.

[00:01:57] Claas Oehlmann (BDI): doubling value to 125 billion

Claas Oehlmann: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the invitation.

Patrick Hypscher: Claas, you just released a really impressive report, and I wanna learn a bit more about the key findings. So, first of all, what’s the outcome of the report?

Claas Oehlmann: Yeah, I mean, for maybe some first thoughts of the outcome of the project together with Boston Consulting Group and in partnership with World Business Council on Sustainable Development, we had a we had a look at what is the really the potential for for the growth, market growth of circular solutions within the German industry. So we looked at the value creation of German industries and what’s the potential with circular businesses, circular business models. And the main outcome for me is if we look at the numbers, we could double the value creation from 60 billion to 125 billion euro per year within the sectors we had a look at. So five sectors, which cover about sixty-two percent of the industrial value creation in Germany. So from now on until 2045, we can more than double the value creation with circular business models from 60 to 125 billion euros. And that’s really a lot if we keep in mind that we have had a look at the industry value creation, which is about 20% of the German GDP. So if we look at that, and then we we really have great potential overall within our main focus industries in Germany.

[00:03:40] The policy gap: EU vs national

Patrick Hypscher: Claas, let’s have a look at the policy dimension. What I really like about the study is that it’s not about we first need to adopt these kind of policies. There is a huge potential. At the same time, I looked at the report, over 170 pages, and I do find one page with a few policy recommendations. Can you elaborate a bit more on so what is needed to really open up this potential?

Claas Oehlmann: Yeah, I mean that’s really unique for me. From this report, of course, we always have or have to have a good discussion about framework conditions, policies, the right policies in place. We are coming out of a really strong phase of regulation within the European Green Deal. We have a lot of policies in place which are now developed with a lot of different legislations under the main core legislation like eco design regulation, batteries, shipments, etc. etc. But what we really had in mind with the study is we have a business potential here and we can really go further doing business, keeping in mind the regulation. Of course, we need it, but the the potential is already there. So let’s go. What we see from my perspective, and maybe to to sum it a bit up, is we have two main dimensions. If you look at our European single market, we really see that there is still a lot of fragmentation within our single market. We have twenty-seven member states and a lot of different interpretations for example end of waste status. Yeah. Refurbishment, remanufacturing defin definitions, we have different rules for some waste treatment processes within the landfill legislation. So we see a clear need to harmonize or to go on with the harmonization of our European rules. And we have a strong interest that we can do this within the Circular Economy Act from the European Commission expected for the third quarter this year. Another dimension which is for me really important is what is the position of the European single market in the in the world and on the global competition? So of course, as in Germany, we are an export-oriented country. We have a strong interest in doing business, trade, have strong trade relations all over the world. But we have really to be have to have a strategic view, how we can protect, on the one hand, our European market. Fair competition for everyone who enters the European single market from third countries. The about the product conditions, product requirements, environmental regulation, trade reguling, etc. So and on the other hand, we have to have a really strategic view which materials products leave our European single markets and then why.

Patrick Hypscher: Okay. So we have a study that focuses on the potential for the German economy. At the same time, most of the topics you mentioned now are European ones. What of these requirements need to be fulfilled on a European level and what more on a nation state level? Yeah.

Claas Oehlmann: Yeah, I mean I mean we have to take different views on that from my opinion. For example, product requirements, rules for transportation within the European single market, waste treatment obligations. From my perspectives, these are really clear European competencies and here they have to be in place comparable European rules in every member state. So that’s the first thing for level playing field within the European Union. We need really the same product rules and and waste treatment rules and the common understanding of of the waste hierarchy in in the European Member States. That’s for me is really European competency. And we saw this in the last years when the European Union shifted the regulation schemes from directives with a opportunity to transpose it in the national law with different ways to European regulations. And that’s really the way forward from my perspective. What we see as a competency for the national level, for example, is the whole discussion of public procurement. So the Europe as the national German government could play a really strong role in the markets where public puc procurement plays a big role in construction, for example, or in vehicles for the lower region, services, etc., waste collection, water services. So the public procurement in some markets play a really big role and there we need national rules which have a really positive impact on circularity. That’s for me clear from national point of view. And another thing is the whole discussion about infrastructure, meet physical infrastructure, but also the digital infrastructure, there we for to make digital passports happen, etc., there national governments really can play a positive role if they support such building up this infrastructure, that companies have a really good environment here and hermit to invest, beside topics like energy prices, etc. So national government can really play a big role for the investment conditions for the companies in Germany, but for all the horizontal topics like product requirements, we need European ones. That’s from my perspective.

[00:09:43] Alexander Meyer zum Felde (BCG): the economic case

Patrick Hypscher: Alex, you just released the joint study with the BDI. You’re the global leader in circular economy at BCG and co-author of this study. Claas already gave us a bit of an overview, but we want to dive into the specific details. First of all, the study is focused on Germany, but we have many international listeners. So how is this applicable to other countries?

Alexander Meyer zum Felde: First of all, thanks for having me. Yeah, it’s great to talk to you. And indeed, we started to assess the GDP potential for Germany. But nonetheless, the assessments and basically the approach as well as the messages hold true for, I would say, most industrialized economies, especially most OECD countries. Obviously, the industry structure might be slightly different, the sectors are different, and it really varies on how dependent you are on external material or imports from materials. Obviously most economies in the Western world do import materials, have a strong industrial structure and hence I would say it does apply for most economies, yes. Okay.

Patrick Hypscher: Okay, great. So keep on listening. It is about circularity, of course, very much from an economic point of view, circular economy. At the same time, circularity does play a role. What’s the understanding of circularity in the study you apply?

Alexander Meyer zum Felde: Yeah. I think this is super crucial to understand. In the past, and I’m also a convicted believer of circular economy is the right thing to do, there’s many good reasons from an environmental standpoint, from a resource independence standpoint to talk about circularity. But we also need to we need to acknowledge that in the last few years the whole discussion around GDP growth, positive business cases, cost and access to resources has really driven the circularity agenda. And if we want to make sure that we spread the topic more broadly and get into more acceptance, we should not neglect the fact that in the end, we should scale those elements of circularity that will provide positive GDP, hence also positive employment ratios, that are inherent business cases to industry and companies, yeah. And the study shows that you can get a five percent margin uplift, for example, on some of these business cases. And only if we achieve this, I think the circularity from a carbon footprint reduction perspective, from a more responsible use of materials and whatever, comes naturally with it. And this is what the study tries to achieve, right? We’re trying to take this away from the we just try to save the planet to it’s a fully economic, rational topic that combines GDP growth, the econom the business side, but also the environmental aspect. Because if we do get into business models that create more value with less resources, we do achieve all of the above. And I think this is super crucial. So on your question, how is circularity embedded? We also did very in-depth analyses. How much less resources would we need to require? How much more does Germany become independent from imports? Keep in mind right now on critical raw minerals, Germany is almost 100% dependent on imports. We show in the study that in some segments, like the energy segment, for the energy transition, we can actually decouple that by about 40% of re s or recycling forty percent of the required materials within the country. So we’re reducing the dependence from imports. And I think this is super crucial. At the same time it has the positive environmental footprint. And the study also shows that we are able to reduce the carbon emissions just by these levers that are already GDP growth positive. We would be reducing by a couple of percentage points the countrywide emissions as well. So there is a coherent link in that yes.

[00:13:54] The five sectors, and who leads

Patrick Hypscher: Okay, nice. You already started to to share details. Let’s keep on doing that and dive deeper where this economic potential comes from. So what are the main industries you looked at?

Alexander Meyer zum Felde: Yep. So the study looks very specifically at the industri from an industrial perspective. So we looked at five sectors. The mobility sector, automotive, obviously in Germany it’s one of the crucial industries. We look at energy because it’s it’s more and more relevant sector in terms of competitiveness, growth and so on. We looked at the construction and building materials sector simply because fifty percent of the materials in Germany used go into construction. We did look at the engineering, technical engineering sector, because it is Germany is leading in recycling technologies, circularity technologies and so on. And we also looked at textiles, but not from a consumer perspective, more from the industrial perspective. What opportunities do we have once the once the closing textiles comes back? So those are the five sectors.

Patrick Hypscher: And who’s leading when it comes to the overall contribution to the growth potential?

Alexander Meyer zum Felde: Well it again it depends on which metrics you’re looking at, right? From a GDP growth, we do see significant potential for the technical engineering and obviously global markets for Germany to be competitive in. From a tonnage and material perspective, obviously the construction material sector is crucial. From an innovation perspective and so on, I think energy also plays a significant reduction. The study also shows that the energy transition in Germany could be forty billion euros cheaper to the taxpayer if we get the circularity aspect right. Right. So I mean there’s additional benefits and so it depends on which you’re looking at. And I think it’s it’s worth investigating for each of those sectors to go a little bit deeper in what’s the benefits of that.

[00:15:54] Levers companies can use now

Patrick Hypscher: What are the measures the companies can take?

Alexander Meyer zum Felde: Yeah. And that varies obviously by where you where you sit in the value chain, what’s the materials your handling and so on. But if I go through the sectors, what are the key levers we’ve been identifying? And crucially to understand, and I think this is where it varies from other circularity papers and documents, we’ve only looked at those that are positive business cases. Some of the levers where you basically so car sharing and so on make sense from a circularity perspective, from an environmental perspective. But if you think about the industry structure in Germany, if we sell 30% less cars, that immediately has an impact on our GDP as well as on employ employment rate. So keep that a little bit in mind if if if you feel that there’s some some circularity levers would be missing. If you if we go through the segments in mobility, for example, some of the elements are around refurbishment, remanufacturing, repair models. Okay. It’s not that we haven’t done it in the past, but we could do even more, right? There are levers in there around recycling, for example. Especially if we now ta look at the EV batteries and the cars, right? In Germany, even in Europe, we do take them back, we dismantle them, we discharge them. We might even recycle them into black mass, but e even that only very little. We have no capacity to process black mass. So at that moment in time, the materials leave mostly to China, to other regions, but we ship we we don’t have that recycling infrastructure in Germany or Europe. Investing into that to close the loop to feed the materials back into, be it the mobility automotive sector, into other type of battery applications, is crucial to close the loop. And so these are the levers you see in the mobility segment. We’ve also detailed case studies. We do have significant rolling stock of great materials, be it trains, for example, right? Think about it. All the steel and and materials in there, even for the trains that are twenty, thirty years old, we have not systemically recycled and taking them apart in in in Germany. Yes, we have fairly high recycling rates, but not necessarily the grades and qualities we need. So there’s significant potential in those levers. In the building in construction sector, there are several levers and some of them have been very intensively discussed. Obviously there’s a part around recycling. I’m I’m very much simplifying now, but if you take concrete aggregates, so from demolition of roads and and construction, you feed it back into the clinker production as an aggregate, you’re actually saving significant CO2 emissions, which with a carbon price will be increasingly cost to you as a business. But you’re also reducing the material input because you’re using crushed aggregates, recycled content and so on. There is there are levers where we can get much better, right? So levers around recycling. That’s also one example where the public can do a little bit more with the special amount of investments available now made by the government. We will be investing significantly into construction. So why not include in public tenders a minimum recycled aggregate, whatever type of content it is, right, to incentivize and and to strengthen the demand side for it. There are also elements when we are building buildings instead of new builds, in some cases also in cities and whatever, refurbishment of those apartment buildings requires significantly less resources, right? So there are potentials limit laid out in in that on the construction materials and building construction side. Next segment would then be, for example, energy. There’s a couple of super interesting levers. Refurbishment of a transformers, for example, some of the grid components. We are six extensively building our grid. Yeah. Why not refer reuse some of those components? We would need to change the incentive structure, but technically, totally feasible. Yeah. What’s interesting if you think about PV recycling or solar panel recycling. We don’t have the capacity in Germany to do it, but we have a significantly high penetration of old solar panels that will come back in five, seven, eight years that contain rare earth minerals and and super valuable materials that currently we would not be harvesting, right? And I think those are the levers then in the energy transition sector that make a lot of sense to think through. So again, you had the refurbishment lever, you had the recycling levers, and so on. The Equipment manufacturing segment is slightly different. Yeah, it’s rather strengthening what we have. So there is a refurb remanufacturing component in there. Take back your old equipment, reuse some of the materials. It’s pure steel, it’s the the engines of some of those things. Especially around magnet recycling. There’s a couple of superb examples from the German industry in the report where businesses are doing magnet recycling, right? Because the materials per se are still as good as 10, 15, 20 years ago. Right now, China is basically buying the world market on magnets, yeah, in order to recycle those materials and components. Again, we lose access to it. So let’s rethink how we enhance some of these elements around the recycling point. The other part is and we’re both at the IFAT as well, right? So we do see that technology leadership. In some segments, be it plastics recycling, sortation recycling, and so on, German companies have 30, 40 percent global market share. Right. Let’s build on that. We do see that the global demand will be about 125 billion annual demand for these equipments. India, China, South America, Latin America, all of these countries are also investing into the same infrastructure. So let’s make sure we keep our companies competitive. How do we do this? We need to look at energy costs. We need to look at labor costs in these kind of things, right? So there’s levers on that as well. And then lastly, textile follows a slightly different route again. You might be wondering why should Germany look at textile recycling, right? And again, not coming from the consumer lens, coming from the industrial. It’s one of the largest waste streams we’re not treating. Significant material ends up in incineration or waste to energy, has been called in some some parts of the world. Nonetheless, countries around us, be it France, be it Turkey, are now taking up that material, recycling it. Technologies are there, need to be scaled to separate polyester, cotton in the different types of materials, but they can be re-reused and and basically fiber to fiber recycled, right? So why should that infrastructure be built up in Turkey and not here? It’s not even labor intensive anymore. It’s really the technologies we need to scale and need to make competitive. And those are examples that are in the different

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, it it absolutely makes sense. Just to be sure that we get it right, I’m I’m pretty sure you you covered it. What about the cannibalization effect? So when you repair, refurb a a car, it’s on the flip side, one car sold less. So did you factor that in?

Alexander Meyer zum Felde: Correct. Yes, and you can imagine it’s been a super big discussion. We have completely factored it in and the numbers that Claas mentioned earlier, right? So the total potential getting from sixty to one twenty-five billion per year, as well as the cumulative eight hundred and eighty billion GDP growth, they are actually already past cannibalization. Right. So it’s really additional potential and we have modeled that through wherever there is a cannibalization effect. We have actually taken that out because the overlying promise of this report is really GDP growth within existing industry landscape infrastructure on positive business cases. And in the moment I have a cannibalization effect that doesn’t yield me any benefit, I immediately don’t have a business case from an industry perspective, right? And so we have factored that in. What’s interesting is still, since for example, if you think about repair refurbishment of some of the equipment, right? Imagine you’re shipping it to Turkey, to India, to China. If someone else does the servicing because you’re not integrated far down that value chain, you’re not offering those services necessarily, you don’t even know where it ends up because it’s been sold through a third party provider and so on, you’re not cannibalizing any new sales per se. You’re actually competing with whoever is repairing this. So think about it, it’s not always I only take an existing product, repair it and can’t sell a new one. It is really it on top or add on to the potential.

[00:24:55] What is holding companies back

Patrick Hypscher: Alex, y the examples you gave, many of them are already possible today. The technology is there, there’s market demand, you mentioned it’s about positive business cases. Of course, as discussed with with Claas, yeah, there are some regulatory changes that would of course facilitate this development. But what is holding companies back or to f flip that so what should we do now? Yeah.

Alexander Meyer zum Felde: so what’s holding the what’s holding companies back? It’s A complexity, B awareness, and C the lack of trust and feasibility. What do you mean by that? If you’ve been running a business for fifty years, you’ve done the same, you have had a linear value chain, it’s optimized on that value chain. It functions, it works really, really well. Now thinking about how you completely change your business model requires thinking outside the boxes we call it, right? That’s complex. You need to collaborate. You need to think a differently about your value chain. And that increases complexity. At the same time, as long as we didn’t have supply chain disruptions, as long as we could rely on global markets, global supply, it was a super easy, convenient type of setup. Now you suddenly have supply chain disruptions. You d simply don’t get access to the material you need to produce. So we s See that mind shift coming into play and the valuation of materials, access to materials and reliability or resilience of supply chains becomes more and more crucial. And I think that’s one of the turning points. The second is short-termism. Yeah, so many companies are incentivized on a per quarter results. If you really want to transform your business model, if you want to become more circular, it might take time, yeah. I’m not talking 10 years, by no means, right? But the it does take one year, two years. You need to adjust your design of your products. You need to think about differently about your service levels and these kind of things. That takes time and not every company is currently incentivized to think in those time frames. And lastly, collaboration becomes more complex. As long as I could choose from five suppliers and I go for the cheapest or the best quality and reliability and best value for money. I just pick and I get it delivered. Now I suddenly need to talk to my suppliers. I need to talk to my customers. I need to probably talk to parts of my value chain or value circles as we hopefully have in the future that I’ve never been engaged with. And I think that’s a super interesting dynamic, but there’s also a lot of opportunity in there, yeah.

Patrick Hypscher: Alex, thanks for giving all the circularity enthusiasts one more argument or many more arguments to drive circularity either in a business or on the state level.

Alexander Meyer zum Felde: Thank you so much.

[00:27:50] Nadine Braun (E.ON): the energy sector

Patrick Hypscher: Nadine, we just listened to the release of the study about the economic potential of the circular economy. How does the energy sector benefit from it?

Nadine Braun: So the energy sector, think, is one of the sectors which is still growing and has really high demand on materials and components in order to achieve the energy transition and the net zero 2030. So I think if you look at this high demand and also the dependency that we have, especially on critical materials, all circular economy strategies will pay off on resilience and sustainability in the energy sector. So therefore, definitely important.

Patrick Hypscher: And can you be more specific or give you an example of wh what do you need these materials for? What’s the equipment you actually need to to set up?

Nadine Braun: So for example batteries, mean batteries is a big topic currently and there different critical materials for example, coltan is one part of the batteries and it’s something that you cannot get in Europe, you cannot get it, you can get it in Africa for example or like in very far away and yeah so the question is how can we replace this with recycled material for example in future. And another example is in transformers. So we are a DSO, an energy network company.

Patrick Hypscher: DSO?

Nadine Braun: Distribution service operator. And I think for us, transformers play an important role. They are needed in order to change the frequency from the high voltage to the low voltage, which you then get at your home. And in order to do this, we need transformers. And the transformer, have a high share of copper. And copper is also something you cannot get in Europe. So we are really highly dependent on global supply chains. And so that’s the real business case for us.

Patrick Hypscher: Okay. And on the other hand, how can energy companies contribute to the circular economy?

Nadine Braun: Yeah, of course, as we are not a manufacturer, we have not the same impact as a manufacturer, for example, from a transformer. But of course, we can already, in our procurement criteria, talk or work together closely with the suppliers to test different new materials, to test recycled materials in order, are they working in our components? If it then comes to our, if we own in the component, then it’s on us to extend lifetime as much as possible to maintenance, repair, to refurbishment. We’re doing that, for example, in our own workshops. So we can extend the lifetime of a transformer for another 30 years. The average is 30 years. But after we repair and maintenance, yeah, we can double the lifetime of a component, and that’s definitely.

Patrick Hypscher: That’s quite an impact. And are you already at the point that you have circular requirements in your tenders when you actually look for the equipments? Be it the batteries, the transformers, that you put some pressure on manufacturers or I mean in the end it’s also about increasing demand and circular procurement.

Nadine Braun: No, definitely. And we are investigating about these possibilities. But I think for the energy sector, we have power lines, yeah. And power has a different physical condition and we have high safety standards. So we have to make a decision from component to component. So we cannot come up with a recycled content share for each, for all our components or materials that we supply. So we have to test it. So what we doing is we have different partnerships with suppliers, for example, with cables we are doing this, to figure out, what can we do? What can they do? And I think this is the way how we want to approach this. It’s kind of innovation, just ongoing.

Patrick Hypscher: Coming to my question, how do companies or even consumers benefit from a more circular energy system? Do we pay less for energy at some point? Or

Nadine Braun: Yeah, I mean, this is, yeah, it would be easy to say just yes, yeah. But what we can see, and this is also the study that we supported from E.ON that has been launched, where we wanted to calculate or to model at least, what would be the impact on cost savings into the investments, just due to refurbishment, lifetime extension, like all these, yeah, softer circular strategies and I think we come up with a huge number it’s 45 billions cost savings until 2045 in Germany. Of course this is a model and there a lot of proxies in it but I think it shows already the potential and if we can save costs in the end this will also have a benefit to the customer of course.

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, so this is basically then transformers last longer, batteries last longer.

Nadine Braun: Exactly, we need less components, new components. Refurbishment is much more cheaper than buying a new component, especially if you look at the global market prices for copper, for example, then there is a business case itself behind it.

Patrick Hypscher: Sounds wonderful. Thanks, Nadine, for sharing this perspective.

Nadine Braun: Thanks.

[00:33:26] Wait for regulation, or start now?

Patrick Hypscher: From a perspective of a company, the study shows many, many opportunities. We discussed a bit the regulatory requirements. What now? Do I wait for the regulators to to create that unified market? Or what’s the next step?

Claas Oehlmann: Yeah, that’s really a good good point. We tried the study to to demonstrate what companies can do without waiting years or four years for the right regulation in pr in place. So we demonstrated there are our strategies already exist, but which are comp competitive within our economy to create new businesses. And these R strategies they differ from sector to sector. For example, we have all the machinery sector, the German export, one machineries. There we see a clear opportunity in the R strategies refurbishment and remanufacturing with five percent more better positive margin than with in comparison with the new machineries. So a clear positive opportunity for remanufacturing and refurbishment. And there, from my point of view, we this study can help to make this visible to companies, to really bring refurb and reman to the heart of company strategies. And these opportunities are there. For some of them, we need some more of better regulation, for some not. But we hope that we can with this results of the study motivate companies because we have a really more or less conservative stu study which are re which is really adaptable to to business models in place and with positive impacts and we hope that we can motivate companies, leaders to see okay there’s a potential and it really has to do with resilience. And of course resil resilience for from my point of view is no free lunch. Yeah. There’s a price to pay for better resilience strategies which in mid and long term will really pay off. Maybe not tomorrow, n not in twenty twenty six. But will resilience has a price and a lot of positive potential positive effects for our economies. And we hope we can really be a part of a really open and business driven discussion with the study

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, Claas, wonderful. I mean thanks for showing the way to a more resilient, competitive, and prosperous economy in society. Thanks.

Claas Oehlmann: yeah, thank you.

[00:36:12] Outro

Patrick Hypscher: This was the second episode in our IFAT special. We will add the links to the report, both the comprehensive German version and the English summary to the show notes. The next episode will be about startups. So we stick to the topic of economics. And I think our final motto is even more relevant for this episode than anywhere else. It’s drive a profitable circular economy. And please don’t forget, the most abundant renewable resource is your imagination. My name is Patrick Hypscher and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.