ANMET – a Polish upcycling start-up – has won the 2021 Polish-German Economic Award at a gala held by the Polish-German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (AHK Polska) in Warsaw in October.
ANMET from Szprotawa on the Polish-German border recycles metals and composite materials, in particular worn out wind turbine blades, which have to date been difficult to recycle. ANMET has developed a technology to recover carbon fibres from wind turbine blades and is working on new materials and products made of recycled composites.
Together with a German partner, ANMET launched a project for re-use and market recycling of wind turbine blades. This is how Wings for Living, which sells outdoor furniture made of propellers, was founded. Such designer furniture has already found its first customers and is becoming more and more popular.
“Recycling of worn out wind turbine blades is a little-noticed challenge of the energy transformation,” says Markus Baltzer, president of AHK Polska. “ANMET is an example of how innovative Polish-German cooperation and innovative thinking can offer new answers to burning questions.”
This year, 31 companies applied, and five were finalists of the AHK Gala, judged by the jury. More than 1,200 participants had previously voted for the five finalists in an online vote.
“Today, Germany is our largest and one of the most important trade partners,” Grzegorz Piechowiak, Deputy Minister of Development and Technology, said at the event. “I am also pleased that more and more Polish investors operate on the German market. More than 1,800 of our companies have their headquarters there. It is also proof that the Polish-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, is perfectly fulfilling its role as a promoter of economic cooperation between the two countries.
With around 1,000 members, it is a bilateral chamber with the largest number of members in Poland and one of the largest German chambers of commerce abroad in the world.
