Photograph (left to right): Pello Bayona (LABORAL Kutxa), Ander Trecu (Caja Rural), Javier Villanueva (RenerCycle), Pablo Cámara (SONAGAR), Agurtzane Telletxea (LABORAL Kutxa) and Javier Izco (Caja Rural)

• RenerCycle, created to develop business solutions in the field of the circular economy, has as shareholders ten companies with recognized experience and international activity in the renewable energy sector.

• With this bank financing agreement, the company ensures the execution of its 4-year business plan with the first investments in Navarra worth €6.5M and the creation of the first jobs in the circular economy

• RenerCycle already offers the market services for the dismantling of wind farms, including the management of the waste generated, the repair and industrial reconditioning of wind turbine components for sale in the spare parts market, as well as different lines of activity for the recycling of the rest of the materials from old wind turbines.

• The operation has been advised by the law firm IDALIA.

About RenerCycle:

RenerCycle was created in 2022 in response to the current climate crisis and continuous degeneration of the planet’s biodiversity. RenerCycle promotes its business activity at a national and international level in the promotion of a new model of production and consumption that is not linear, but circular in which the value of products, materials and resources is maintained in the economy for as long as possible, waste generation is reduced to a minimum and waste that cannot be avoided is used to the greatest extent possible. All this with the aim of contributing to achieving a sustainable, decarbonised economy that is more efficient in the use of natural resources while favouring the competitiveness of the renewable industry, in line with the main initiatives for safeguarding the environment.

RenerCycle’s main business lines are the dismantling of wind farms, including the management of waste generated, and the repair and refurbishment of wind components for the aftermarket.

RenerCycle also promotes new lines of business in the field of recycling of composite materials from wind turbines (blades and nacelles), as well as organic materials such as gearbox oils, among other industrial initiatives.

RenerCycle offers a comprehensive, economically competitive and technically and logistically viable proposal for the dismantling and management of wind farm materials so that they are executed in the safest and most environmentally friendly terms and for the promotion of a circular economy and sustainable economic growth of renewable energies.

About the operation:

Following its creation in 2022, RenerCycle managed to close its second capital increase in July 2023 for a value of €4.5 million. The operations eligible for financing under this new agreement, signed last February by RenerCycle with Caja Rural de Navarra, LABORAL Kutxa and SONAGAR (Sociedad de Garantía Recíproca de Navarra) will have a limit of 2 million euros for the execution of the company’s business plan over the next 4 years and the total amount of which amounts to 6.5 million euros.

On the industrial implementation and recycling of wind blades:

RenerCycle plans to start industrial activity at its logistics centre for the temporary storage of nacelles, towers and blades in the Falces industrial estate. At the same time, it will carry out the pre-treatment of its metal waste to be later recovered as raw material in smelting furnaces.

This initiative is carried out in two phases. The first includes the refurbishment of a 15,000-square-metre industrial plot for the logistics centre and pre-treatment of steel towers, and the second will involve expanding these areas by 9,500 square metres to house a nacelle dismantling plant and a spare parts warehouse.

In this way, the facilities will support Waste2Fiber, the future blade recycling plant led by the Acciona Group in Lumbier and in which RenerCycle also participates. The total investment amounts to 16.7 million euros, of which 5.3 million are subsidized by the IDAE through the Circular Economy PERTE.

More than 50,000 end-of-life turbines by 2030

The great growth of renewable energies worldwide leads the sector itself to develop effective and cost-effective circularity solutions to achieve a 100% sustainable sector.

It is estimated that by 2030 there will be more than 50,000 wind turbines in Europe that will have reached or exceeded 20 years of useful life, with Spain and Germany being the markets that will have the most fleet to be dismantled with more than 16,000 turbines each. The magnitude of this market is also transferred to shovels, a component that from 2025 cannot be deposited in landfills and must therefore be recycled. It is estimated that by 2030 more than 500,000 tonnes of wind blades will have reached the end of their useful life, of which 170,000 tonnes correspond to the Spanish market. RenerCycle will initially focus its services on the wind energy sector to meet the growing need of this sector, although it was born with the vocation of developing circularity solutions as the market demands them in both the wind and solar photovoltaic fields and battery storage.