Covestro has announced its participation in the Kollert research project — a German publicly funded, interdisciplinary consortium dedicated to developing recyclable product concepts for automotive lighting, mechatronic and electronic components.
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The three-year project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) under the CircularGlowUp funding framework and supervised by the Karlsruhe Project Management Agency (PTKA), addresses one of the automotive industry’s most pressing challenges: how to keep materials in use longer, reduce resource consumption, and build genuinely circular value chains.
Kollert brings together Forvia Hella as coordinator alongside partners BMW, Covestro, Geba, Fraunhofer IEM, Fraunhofer UMSICHT, the University of Paderborn, Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), and SW Maschinenservice.
The project runs from June 2026 to May 2029, with a total BMFTR funding volume of €4.371 million including project lump sums.
The automotive industry faces growing pressure from resource scarcity, supply security concerns, and tightening regulatory requirements — most notably the EU End-of-Life Vehicles (ELV) Regulation. Technological hurdles, cost pressure, and insufficient product recyclability have so far prevented efficient plastics cycles from becoming established at scale, Covestro says. Kollert directly addresses this gap by placing “Design for Circularity” at its core — product design optimized for recyclability from the very beginning, complemented by four R-strategies: Repair, Re-Use, Remanufacture, and Recycle.
Kollert researches how future lighting components can be made repairable, reusable, and recyclable — and what production and logistics processes this requires.
As a key materials partner in Kollert, Covestro contributes its expertise in high-performance polymers and sustainable material solutions — working across the full circular value chain, from supporting circular product design and material concepts through to the evaluation of recycling pathways for polycarbonate.
Covestro says its Makrolon, Bayblend and Apec materials are among the most widely used plastics in automotive lighting applications, and bringing these materials back into high-quality use cycles is central to the project’s ambition. Covestro says its involvement ensures that material properties, recyclate quality, and end-of-life behaviour are fully considered from the design stage onward — a prerequisite for true circularity, and a direct expression of Covestro’s vision of a fully circular economy.
“Kollert is a prime example of how we create value together with our customers and partners — going beyond material supply to co-designing solutions from the very beginning,” said Monique Buch, Chief Commercial Officer at Covestro. “By aligning early across the value chain with BMW, Forvia Hella and other partners, we can embed circularity directly into product development. That is what true co-creation looks like—and how we turn sustainability ambitions into tangible outcomes.”
