On 7 October 2025 EcoReFibre partners met in Bordeaux alongside the French Panels and Circular Economy Symposium (Panneaux & Économie Circulaire ) to refine the Strategic Roadmap “Unlocking Circularity and Market Potential from Wood Waste”. The workshop, co-led by InnovaWood and the European Panel Federation, brought together consortium partners, advisory board members, and external experts both on-site and online, to align on the roadmap’s content.

The discussion focused on key drivers and barriers, for scaling-up the circular use of wood waste in the panel industry. A key market driver highlighted is the industry’s need for secure and sustainable supply of raw materials, while the under-utilised post-consumer fibreboard represents a major opportunity to meet this demand. However, persistent barriers such as regional disparities and fragmented collection systems, limit efficient recycling.  Asymmetric competition between energy recovery and material use also reduces the potential to capture these materials. The workshop highlighted that new technologies and circular business models can help overcome these obstacles by improving collection, sorting and recycling processes. 

To address these challenges, key R&I priorities have been identified in the areas of secondary raw material market development,  improving market and material flow data, and advancing technologies for sorting, fibre extraction and panel production using recycled fibres, supported by design-for-recycling principles.

The session concluded that the sector must both increase the quantity of wood waste collected and upgrading the quality of collected streams. Policy recommendations have been developed to support these goals, including measures to improve collection schemes, and early-stage sorting, strengthen market standards, and prioritise material recycling over energy recovery.

Once published, the roadmap will offer policymakers, industry and researchers an actionable pathway to scale-up the use of recycled wood fibres in the panel industry.