KreisEL

Since April 2026, we have been working with four partners on the KreisEL project. East Westphalia-Lippe and South Westphalia are among the most important industrial locations in NRW and play a leading role in the electrical and electronics industry. The European Green Deal is driving the shift towards a resource-conserving, sustainable economy, with the circular economy as a central building block. This has a noticeable impact on companies and their value chains: resource-efficient product and process design is moving to the centre and driving circular innovation, in order to secure competitiveness and resilience.

With KreisEL, we are pursuing a novel, holistic and regional approach. Rather than looking at individual segments, as previous projects have done, we consider the industry’s entire value chain and leverage the synergies of two neighbouring regions. The project addresses both manufacturers in the business-to-business (B2B) sector, such as those in automation, building and energy technology, or electrical installation, and in the business-to-consumer (B2C) sector, i.e. manufacturers of white goods, brown goods and grey goods. It also covers the entire value chain, from material suppliers and component manufacturers to retailers, recycling and waste management companies, and municipal collection points.

The project runs from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2029, with a total volume of around €2 million. As one of the five consortium members, we contribute to the various project areas. Our focus is on market modelling: here, we are conducting a status quo analysis of the industry and developing a target vision and a development model for the transition to a circular economy, including from the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The aim of KreisEL is to develop an industry-wide approach along the entire value chain of the electrical and electronics industry and to close the gap between product development and recovery, which has been missing so far and is one of the industry’s biggest challenges.

To this end, the project aims to foster new value creation networks that anchor the circular economy as a core principle of all processes, and to pool the potential of East Westphalia-Lippe and South Westphalia through new forms of cooperation. This is intended to reduce dependencies and strengthen the regional economy as well as the competitiveness and resilience of companies. In addition, the project’s findings are intended to provide impetus for policymakers.

As a first step, a status quo analysis of the industry will be carried out. From it, a target vision and a development model for the transition to a circular economy will be developed, including from the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). INZIN contributes in particular through this market modelling and plays a central role within the consortium. Our expertise feeds primarily into the analysis of industry structures and the development of realistic scenarios for the transformation process.

Furthermore, the project will build a stakeholder map, collect next-practice examples, and produce pioneer interviews and blog posts. For companies, it will also develop checklists and formats for scouting, knowledge transfer, training and networking, and it will support the development of an enterprise metaverse called “KreisEL”. In addition, regional peer exchange groups will be launched and new research collaborations between industry and academia initiated.

Another focus is securing skilled labour: project experiences will be transferred into university teaching and study programmes, professional conferences will be organised, and the transfer of final theses into companies will be supported. In addition, stakeholders from business, academia, public administration and politics will be networked along the entire value chain, in close cooperation with the actors of the regional development strategies.

The KreisEL project is funded by the European Union and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia under the ERDF/JTF Programme NRW 2021–2027.