Work Packages

The objective of WP0 Go-to-Market strategy is developing a strategy and a business plan for starting within the completion of the upscaling project (looking forward to the 6 years afterwards).

WP0 will be centered around the identified commercial exploitation opportunities, starting from the expectations of OEM direct participating to the proposals (STELLANTIS for the automotive). FENICE Commercialisation partners Microtex Composites and Crossfire srl will develop a strategy and a business plan in a realistic and relevant way.Recyclability and fire resistance are the characteristics which are required for electrification of cars and currently produced prepregs would not have the suitable characteristics.

Within WP0, MICROTEX,GS4C and CROSSFIRE will jointly guide the partnership to:

• evaluate the added value of FENICE innovations, as well as understand the advantages/disadvantages over competing solutions. This will include an accurate comparison of the state-of-the-art commercial solutions, including safety, costs, environmental benefits, ease-of-use and other features;
• perform a realistic and relevant analysis of market conditions, expected market size and growth rate, competitors and competitive solutions. These information are mostly publicly available, although significant efforts will be needed in the collection of data and all partners will be involved;
• identify target customers and segment them according to their needs and characteristics;
• promote a strategy plan for commercialisation and industrialization, minimizing time to market.

ENEA will be in charge of this WP, supported by all the other partners. ENEA will set up a Coordination Steering Board (in which all partner reference people will be involved), in order to ensure that all the partners take part to the decisions with one vote. Considering the specific character of this high TRL proposal, a key importance will be given to the exploitation and qualification activities in order to maximize the market uptake of the innovative solutions. Relevant standard for conformity assessment will be identified as one of the issues, enabling a fast industrial uptake. ENEA will deal with the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), including partner background assessment, patent analysis, IP protection and IP sharing among the partners policy. FENICE is characterised by high TRL ambitions which culminates in an extended exploitation strategy, aimed at increasing market acceptance and preparing (in synergy with WP0 suggestions) a path to easy commercialisation by Microtex/Crossfire, before or immediately after the end of the project. In the different WPs, characterisation will be performed using current international standards, promoting pre-normative research if current standards were not covering all key characteristics of these new materials. CRF will be in charge of periodically checking the status of WP1 activities, finding mitigation solutions in case of delays on one of these and other horizontal activities (like reporting to the KIC RM and the EIT). ENEA will ensure:

• supervision of the progress of the work related with the exploitation of the results;
• review of the technical work progress looking for new business opportunities;
• review of Market assessment, business plans, business models, financing schemes and regulatory recommendations;
• management of the exploitation of the results;
• chair and manage relations between Commercialisation partners (Microtex and Crossfire) OEMs and non-profit partners in the common interest of FENICE partnership and exploitation.

FENICE aims at weight reduction by applying fibre-reinforced materials for fire-protection in transports and constructions, so it is perfectly in line with the European Commission’s target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions of (compared to 1990) at least 55% by 2030. However, broad use of these materials is meaningful only if circular recycling is developed, which is the second primary target of Fenice. In WP2, the partnership will develop the semifinished materials, aiming at indutrialisation, in accordance with automotive OEMs needs and expectations.

WP2 concentrates most of FENICE project resources, i.e. over 1.5M€.The objective is to develop a collection of solutions adapting to Stellantis strategies, representing the most immediate way of FENICE innovation to get into automotive mass market. The approach of WP2 will be developing fire resistant composite materials, considering both the process, end-of-life recycling, and all the implications in its application in the battery box production. FENICE decided to gather all these experimental activities into one WP only, under the coordination of ENEA, to favour the multidisciplinary spirit of Fenice partnership.

• T2.1. SELECTION OF DEMONSTRATIVE PARTS
• T2.2. PROCESS AND MATERIALS OPTIMISATION
• T2.3 FINITE ELEMENT MODELING, RAW MATERIALS PROCUREMENT; COMPOSITES JOINING
• T2.4 SCRAPS AND END-OF-LIFE RECYCLING; ALUMINIUM PRETREATMENTS

The need of efficient circular recyclable composite materials is driven not only by environmental reasons (which requires avoiding incineration or disposal of PMC waste) and legislation (directive EU 2008/98/EC) but also to make European manufacturing less dependent from imported raw materials. Fenice will show that developed FML and composites based Crosspreg are fully recyclable. This can also be applied to PET sandwich components and Crosspreg scraps, also when including aluminiun. In case of basalt, EOL fibres can be remelted to new fibre, without mechanical degradation, closing the recycling cycle (as project C2CC showed, www.c2cc-project.eu).

The activities in this WP (more than 25% of total resources) are devoted to the scale-up and production of TRL 7 project demonstrators. Specifically:

• T3.1 ECODESIGN; MOULDS & PILOT LINES CAE AND UPSCALE
• T3.2 PRODUCTION BY WARM PRESSING ENGINEERING
• T3.3 PRODUCTION OF COMPONENTS FOR C.A. (Conformity Assessment)

The tasks and activities in WP4 are devoted to the demonstration of the environmental and technical value of FENICE FML (Fiber Metal Laminates), in relation to circular economy, EIT Raw Materials targets and end users expectations. Considering increasing end-user attention to environmental issues, the environmental assessment program developed in WP4 (T4.4) will contribute to a rapid market success of FENICE technologies and related Microtex semifinished products, at least as much as demonstrated technical performances (T4.1, T4.2 and T4.3). LCA will deal with all innovative raw materials necessary for the production of semifinished material for FML and in particular:

• basalt fabric (produced by DBF Germany)
• biobased PFA fire retardant resins (produced by TRANSFURAN Chemicals)
• hybrid thermoplastics (produced by CROSSF)

Considering the importance of technical and environmental assessment for FENICE innovations, 20% of the total budget will be devoted to WP4, making constant reference to internationally accepted standards. Besides Stellantis expectations, FENICE will enquire other OEMs' technical targets, including possible applications outside the automotive, which is favored from the fact that a number of partners work on several different sectors.

Some LCA data are already available, but UBX will try to fill gaps and collect basic info, missing in current databases.

Particularly interesting from a LCA point of view the following points:

• DBF optimised embodied energy in the fibre, up to one third of Filava one;
• PFA is being widely adopted in fire applications, as a fully-biobased environmental friendly substitute of phenol resins;
• CROSSF shares raw material sourcing with other mass productions and its product is 100% recyclable after use.

• T4.1 QUALIFICATIONS IN EXPECTED WORKING CONDITIONS
• T4.2 WARM PRESSED PANELS CONFORMITY ASSESSMENT (CA)
• T4.3 DEMONSTRATORS CONFORMITY ASSESSMENT (CA)
• T4.4 LCA and Education

The broad impact of FENICE project will be achieved by communication and reach-out activities. It will promote a shift towards more sustainable manufacturing models of circular economy and electrification. Communication at conference events and participation in stakeholder conferences and events will be an integral part of WP5 and will be planned carefully along the project. This effort will result in the participation to national and international events, supporting the creation of an automotive battery production value chain in EU. e.g. the interaction with EERA-Energy Storage program (EERA is the European Energy Research Alliance) will be considered. This will ensure the use of the results to influence policy-makers and the scientific community, to guarantee the follow-up.

WP5 starts from the assumptions that (1) an integrated approach has to be fully embedded in the project’s overall work plan; (2) effective communication directly increases the impact of research and innovation.The communication plan will be agreed between partners within 2022. It will explicit the following elements:

• Objectives of the communications
• Identification and anticipation of expected project outcomes and of their schedule
• Targeting the audience, and plan a way to reach it (who, to whom, what, when and how)
• Consider the proper way, preparing materials costumised on their expected level of understanding
• Making alliance with other EU projects and the innovation community with apossible common interest to reach the market, e.g. cell or hydrogen storage developers (being H2 generally considered the best solution for collective transports and being the technology similarly interested in lightweight composites with improved fire resistance and recyclability)
• Choosing of the best ways to communicate to other external stakeholders and EU citizens, to demonstrate and maximise the societal and economic impact of Research & Innovation (R&I) funding and the Horizon Europe Framework Program.