Nordic pilots show three clear circular flow types – and what it will take to scale them
The final event of the Nordic Circularity Piloting Program for technical building solutions marked a clear shift: from asking if circularity is possible, to discussing how it will actually scale in the market. Over 18 months, 21 companies ran eight pilots across five technical product categories in Finland, Sweden and Norway.
During the event, held at Nordbygg in Stockholm – the Nordic region's largest gathering for the construction and real estate industry – we heard pilot teams share concrete learnings from real renovation sites, enablers unpack how they are building new reuse services, and large manufacturers reflect in a joint panel on what it will take to move from one-off pilots to everyday practice.
At the closing session, three distinct circular flow types emerged as the backbone of future business models, and the discussion turned to what each of them needs to scale beyond pilots.
Watch the full event recording below:
From one‑off pilots to three circular flow types
Underneath the pilots, the program surfaced three distinct new ways for technical building solutions to circulate and create value: where products return to manufacturers, where they move within an owner's portfolio, and where they flow between different owners. Together, these three flows offer a practical map for organising circularity in technical building solutions.
1. Producer‑led flows: manufacturers take back their own products
In producer-led flows, manufacturers collect used equipment, refurbish it in their own facilities and resell it with a new warranty. Five of the eight pilots fell into this category – including Lindab's take-back of ducts, Swegon's refurbishment of HVAC equipment, ASSA ABLOY's reuse of access solutions, and Oras' faucets and showers as a service.
This model is dominant because manufacturers already control the key enablers: product knowledge, repair processes, warranty management and a trusted brand. The pilots also showed that, with early planning, dismantling, transport, upgrading and quality assurance can slot into existing construction processes rather than creating a parallel system.
2. Flows within a single property owner’s portfolio
In this flow, a property owner reuses technical systems between their own buildings. In Kotka for example, as part of broader energy renovation, existing ventilation units were identified, upgraded and reused within the city's portfolio, cutting embodied emissions while maintaining strong financial returns.
Here, the value lies in treating the portfolio as a long-term material bank, rather than looking at each demolition in isolation. Consultants and enablers play a crucial role in scanning the stock, running calculations and spotting matches between outgoing and incoming projects.
3. Flows between different property owners’ portfolios
The third flow is where products move from one owner's asset to another's project. This is where new circular business models, marketplaces and logistics providers can emerge. For example, Staaltro's work on cable trays, collected from CapMan's renovation project in Oslo, for resale through a wholesaler, is one example.
The flows between portfolios have significant volume and business potential but require new coordination roles and capabilities that don't fully exist yet. This flow type therefore opens up new business possibilities for both established and new value chain actors.
What it really takes to scale these flows
Drawing on the pilot showcases presented at the event, a consistent set of conditions for scaling emerged across all three flow types.
Clear incentives for every actor
Pilots that worked best were those where each part of the value chain had a tangible upside – property owners, demolition contractors, manufacturers, installers, consultants and startups alike. In producer-led flows, this means manufacturers can build new revenue streams around refurbishment and re-warranted products, while demolition and dismantling companies can specialise in selective dismantling and sell their expertise as a premium service. For flows within and between portfolios, cost savings and project-level CO₂ reductions need to be visible and shared along the chain – otherwise reuse becomes a "nice-to-have" that gets dropped when schedules tighten.
Decisions made early – and written into contracts
Several pilots confirmed that bringing reuse in late creates confusion and extra work. In the producer-led HVAC pilot, reuse was introduced after procurement, leading to re-planning and unclear responsibilities. The practical recommendation from the teams was straightforward: include reuse targets and inventories alongside mandatory material surveys from the outset, and specify dismantling responsibilities, processes and price mechanisms directly in contracts, instead of treating reuse as an add-on.
Robust dismantling and inflow management
For producer-led flows, the main bottleneck is not demand for refurbished products – it is securing a predictable inflow of suitable equipment. Manufacturers stressed the need to separate the "inflow business" (finding, assessing and taking back products) from the "outflow business" (selling refurbished units), each with its own logic and partners. For flows between portfolios, the critical missing piece is often an external enabler or consultant who connects the supply and demand in the first place. Also, it is crucial to have a dismantling partner who can confidently offer fixed prices, manage risk and work to tight demolition timelines. When those capabilities are absent or inexperienced, promising reuse matches simply don't happen.
Better data and documentation
Several speakers highlighted the gap between what is legally required in demolition reports and what is needed to systematically plan reuse. Reports are often too generic or incomplete to support real-time decision-making for circular flows, forcing multiple site visits and late-stage surprises. Future-ready flows will need more detailed, standardised inventories that identify reusable technical systems rather than just waste fractions, supported by digital tools and platforms that track technical building systems across portfolios and borders to enable matching at scale.
A mindset shift: from demolition sites to material banks
Finally, the event underlined that scaling circular flows is as much a cultural change as a technical one. Enablers working in flows within a single property owner's portfolio and between different property owners' portfolios argued that buildings need to be seen first as material banks – with high-value technical systems that can be redeployed – and only second as demolition projects. When owners and designers adopt that mindset, opportunities like partial modernization of elevators or factory-refurbished locks and access systems start to look like the rational default rather than an experiment.
Looking ahead: from pilots to the new normal
The final survey conducted with the pilot teams paints an encouraging picture. Over 92% of respondents considered their pilot either successful or very successful, 85% agreed or strongly agreed that their pilot confirmed technical feasibility and operational viability, and 78% saw clear customer interest in the piloted solutions. Most importantly, 85% of participating companies said they are likely or very likely to scale their piloted solutions into new projects – a strong signal that this is the beginning of a larger shift, not the end of a project phase.
At the event, we heard large manufacturers talk openly about building global offerings for partial modernization and refurbishment. We heard startups describe how they are refining dismantling methods and pricing models. We heard enablers committing to run new projects in 2026, combining flows within and between portfolios.
Most importantly, we saw a growing community of people across the Nordic building sector who are willing to share not only their successes, but also their failures, to move the field forward faster together.
What will decide the pace from here is not whether circularity is technically possible, but how quickly the three flow types can be industrialised: producer-led refurbishment as a standard offer, portfolio-level reuse as a routine part of asset management, and between-portfolio flows supported by specialised dismantling and data-driven matching.
The future of circularity in technical building solutions will not be defined by a single "perfect" model. It will be built, flow by flow, by manufacturers who take responsibility for their installed base, by property owners who treat their portfolios as material banks, by service providers who match supply and demand across borders – and by policymakers who set the rules so that circular choices become the new normal.
And as we were reminded at the very end of the event: the most important recommendation is still the simplest one – get started.