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Wind energy is growing fast — but every fibreglass blade is a future landfill. The industry built a $50 billion market on a material it structurally cannot recycle, and the problem grows every year.
of decommissioned blades are simply buried in the ground.
Wind-blade landfill · Casper, WyomingCumulative decommissioned blade material — and still no circular solution at commercial scale.
Fibreglass composite can't be separated into reusable materials at a viable cost. The OEMs know it, the EU knows it — no one has a scalable fix.
Retire a turbine model and its moulds are scrapped — so owners of ageing turbines can't buy replacement blades at any price.
The preferred choice for structural applications — the strength, dimensional stability and load-bearing capacity a turbine blade needs, from a renewable material instead of fossil-based fibreglass.
A blade grown from wood, not drilled from oil — a fraction of the carbon to make, and fully recyclable instead of buried at end of life.
Wooden blades aren't just cleaner — they're easier to build. Milling each blade straight from engineered wood turns a slow, mould-bound craft into a fast, programmable production line.
Dense Nordic spruce, layered and bonded into LVL: the stiffness and fatigue resistance a turbine blade needs, from a material that is renewable rather than fossil-based.
The laminated veneer components are precision-machined to their final aerodynamic profile by five-axis CNC, guided entirely by a digital model instead of a fixed mould. There is nothing to tool up and nothing to retool: a new blade size or design enters production the moment the file is updated — impossible with conventional fibreglass moulds.
It performs like a conventional blade in the field — then, instead of being buried, the wood is fully recyclable and returns to the cycle.
Conventional blades are pressed in giant fibreglass moulds — one per model, each costing millions and scrapped the moment that turbine is retired. A wooden blade is milled straight from a digital design, so there's no mould to build, store or throw away. Change the file and the same line builds for almost any wind project:
Purpose-built for onshore turbines — the backbone of Europe's wind fleet — and weather-rated for onshore loads.
Retire a turbine model and its moulds vanish. We mill replacements from a file, so ageing fleets keep turning.
Short retrofit blades or 90 m+ giants, all on one line. The program changes; the tooling never does.
New geometry is a software change, not a new factory — a fresh design reaches the floor in weeks.
Project partners
Voodin Blade Technology · VMG Group · Anker-Tec
VB1F establishes a first-of-a-kind factory to manufacture fully recyclable wind turbine blades from Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL). Beginning operation in 2031, it will produce up to 160 blade sets a year — contributing to almost 13.5 million MWh of electricity over ten years and avoiding more than 2.4 million tonnes of CO₂e. A highly automated, mould-free process on a fully electric processing centre cuts capital investment by roughly 54% versus conventional methods, enabling any blade size or design without re-tooling, while the LVL blades solve the end-of-life disposal problem and store biogenic carbon.
Aligned with the European Green Deal, the Net-Zero Industry Act and REPowerEU, the project builds an all-European sustainable supply chain, supports close to 450 operational jobs, and is fully replicable through licensing for deployment near wind farms worldwide.
This project is funded by the European Union under the Innovation Fund grant agreement 101252033.
In accordance with Article 17 of the Grant Agreement, the European Union emblem is displayed and the European Union funding is acknowledged in all communication, dissemination materials and project infrastructure.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.