Why was GOT important to you/your SME?

It gave us the opportunity to develop our Minimum Viable Product, our KiriCore Material Mats. Our KiriCore Material Mats, which are based on Kiri wood, are a more sustainable and cost-effective substitute for Balsa core material and foams as core material in wind turbine blade composites.

What are the advantages of participating in a project like GOT?

Of course, the financial support was important for us. But at least as important were the networking opportunities with European partners, companies and investors, and the seminars and workshops. So thanks to the GOT project we were able to establish contacts with major European rotor blade manufacturers.

What were the big takeaways from participating and integrating into the GOT ecosystem?

Thanks to the GreenOffshoreTech ecosystem, we have been able to open up further areas of application for our KiriCore Material mats as a core material for composites. For example, we are currently in contact with manufacturers of rail vehicles, where composites are becoming increasingly important and our sustainable KiriCore Material mats, which are based on Kiri wood grown in Europe, are very suitable as a core material, Furthermore, we were also able to become a member of the Composites United Network on the basis of the GOT ecosystem, which further expands our network and the area of application of our KiriCore Material mats, as our KiriCore Material mats have a significantly better resin uptake behavior compared to Balsa core material. This has some implications for recycling and reuse of our KiriCore Material mats after their end-of-life as core material in composites of rotor blades of wind turbines. This is the reason, why there is interest of numerous companies in the Composites United network.

From start to finish, what was the biggest challenge and the greatest achievement?

The biggest challenge was the development of the Minimum Viable Product, the KiriCore Material mats. Here numerous tests had to be carried out, furthermore it was important to use Kiri wood from European origin in order to gain initial experience regarding the upscaling of the supply chain and the processing of the Kiri wood as well as the production of the KiriCore Material Mats. The biggest achievement was that we were able to win a first manufacturer of rotor blades for wind turbines to construct a prototype blade with composites based on KiriCore Material mats with us.