From Sea to Street: Transforming Maritime (Rope) Waste into Circular Urban Furniture.
This project wants to develop optimal material compositions for durability, weather resistance, and printability while exploring color integration possibilities and scalability potential. To do so, we need an ecosystem and value chain perspective:

● Collection Phase
Hendrik Veder Group systematically collects used maritime ropes from shipping operations, implementing quality sorting and material separation protocols.

● Processing Phase
Healix transforms collected ropes into high-grade 3D-printable regranulate through advanced cleaning, shredding, heating, and extrusion processes.

● Production Phase
The New Raw creates innovative outdoor furniture designs using the recycled material through large-scale 3D printing technology.

In4Art serves as process facilitator and strategic advisor. We facilitate cross-sector collaboration between maritime logistics, recycling technology, and design and manufacturing partners. Our role focuses on systems thinking, stakeholder alignment, and developing sustainable partnership models that ensure long-term viability beyond the project period. We support the consortium in navigating their challenges while maintaining focus on circular economy principles.

The New Raw (Large-scale 3D Manufacturing), IKM Hendrik Veder Group (Maritime Equipment and Logistics), Healix (Advanced Recycling).
Supported by the Ignite group.

June 2025 – May 2026

The Circular Marine Rope Recycling project brought together three parties with a shared ambition: to convert discarded ship ropes from the maritime sector into high-quality circular products for public spaces. After use, ship ropes are often incinerated or processed into low-value materials. This project investigated whether this waste stream could be upgraded into a new, valuable raw material and demonstrated that this is technically feasible.

The project was executed as a strategic ecosystem pilot: a deliberate first step in validating the chain and mapping the conditions for structural scaling up. The  development of the ‘boei’  is the tangible demonstration object that makes the circular chain visible to customers, port parties, and a wider public.

However, the structural chain and the complete business model have not yet been definitively realized. The project has highlighted that scaling up requires more than just technical feasibility: sufficient and consistent material volumes, color sorting at the source, cost-efficient processing, and additional chain partners on both the input and output sides are prerequisites for a robust and profitable chain. The broader market context also plays a role here: the economy of circular plastics is under pressure due to low prices for virgin polymers, which makes the business case for recycling particularly challenging.

The project has therefore functioned as a valuable validation pilot: the key technical and organizational issues have been explored, the critical success factors have been identified, and the foundation has been laid for a targeted follow-up phase. The pilot has not only validated the technical approach but also laid the foundation for an implementable circular chain methodology: a working collection, processing, and application model that can be directly continued and scaled up in practice as the chain expands further. The unique combination of maritime waste, innovative 3D-printed design, and visible demonstration objects in public spaces makes this project a building block for a broader circular port and materials economy.

Boei (2026) The New Raw & IKM Hendrik Veder

Financed through Circulaire Ketenprojecten – RVO, Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat.