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In 2022,
The team behind Blade-Made, with from left to right:
They remain striking apparitions, Blade-Made's creations. Seen from above, it looks like pieces of windmill have fallen from the sky, in reality they are carefully designed benches, slides, geographical markers and climbing walls. All from windmill blades that otherwise would have ended up on the scrap heap. It's a useful use for a waste stream that's only going to increase, as well as a way to reduce carbon emissions from other construction projects.
Steward ownership
In 2022, the start-up was still part of
"After all, Blade-Made's mission is bigger than us,"
One hundred percent
The mission De Krieger talks about is crystal clear to him: reuse one hundred percent of the discarded wind turbine blades. Right, all of them. An ambitious, but in his opinion very necessary goal. "Right now the recycling capacity is still insufficient. Steps are being taken, but the process is still very energy intensive and produces a relatively low-quality product. In addition, as a society we also have a space and materials problem. If we can make high-quality products from wind turbines, which we try to preserve as much as possible in their original form, the recycling industry can continue to innovate. And we contribute with our projects in these other areas as well."
In 2022, Blade-Made was still primarily concerned with public playground equipment and seating. And such projects have not yet disappeared from the start-up's portfolio. For example, Blade-Made is now working with construction company Beens on the Bleekerseiland for the municipality of Meppel, upgrading two to five old windmill blades into seating areas along flowerbeds. But Blade-Made has also since broadened its focus. For example, it plans to focus on larger projects, including noise barriers along highways and bridges. One such bridge may already be coming to
"For noise barriers, we already had the concepts in place. We are working together with Dura Vermeer Infra on a test setup, and have been assigned a location by the
Technically feasible
"For building bridges in
Currently, Blade-Made is seeking funding. Not only to make the projects themselves more financially attractive by implementing more standardization, but also to better accommodate the swelling influx of wind turbine blades. "We've had discussions with investors, but haven't been able to get anything official in yet. So we are working on that now. With the money we can, for example, set up a yard to store and process blades. We really need something like that to scale up. But we still find the financing difficult. For one investor we come too early, for another we fall just outside the scope. Impact investment is a new world for us and we are not yet a household name. Potential customers do know where to find us, we just haven't found the most suitable investor yet."
Knowledge and budget needed
On top of that, the influx of wind turbines can create challenging situations. "We cannot behave like a linear company that has a constant and reliable supply of raw materials that all look the same. With us, we may have made a design based on a 20-meter blade, but be supplied with a 23-meter blade made by another manufacturer. Then that design has to be redone. Now I expect that will have to happen less and less as we do more projects. But as long as we haven't been able to do a project three times, we will continue to run into that. We just need knowledge and budget."
On the demand side, on the other hand, De Krieger experiences no shortage. Although he calls the number of applications in
Customization
With a wind turbine blade as a building block, you can soon let your imagination run wild. What else can you make with it? But for Blade-Made, it is really the mission - to reuse all old windmill blades - that takes precedence. "Ultimately, I don't think the outlet is the most important thing," De Krieger explains. "If we can use all the discarded blades for noise barriers and playgrounds, I'm totally fine with that. I think some of the projects will always be custom-made. That's nice too, we can take pleasure in that as an architectural firm. But the power is really in the repetition."
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