Innovation Recycled and Ready

Repurposed composites take gold—and show why collaboration is the key to aerospace circularity

Airbus has helped to engineer a new second life for a thermoplastic composite flying part. This successful repurposing doesn’t just mark a technical breakthrough. It’s a demonstration of why the circular economy requires working together across the supply chain. The proof? The collaborative project is now a prize-winning success!

A consortium of aerospace companies has successfully recycled and repurposed a thermoplastic composite aircraft part. One of the partners, Toray, has earned a prestigious Innovation Award from the composite industry organisation JEC in the process.

The consortium took an end-of-life A380 engine pylon fairing cover and transformed it into an equivalent component for the A320neo. The division of labour between the partners demonstrates the centrality of collaboration to circularity, from the biggest OEMs to niche specialists. It’s also a great example of how Airbus is encouraging innovation in the complex science of composite recycling.

Recycling and Repurposing

Composites are hard to recycle and even harder to repurpose for aerospace. The prize-winning initiative, a collaboration between Airbus, Daher, Tarmac Aerosave and Toray Advanced Composites, shows that a pathway to industrial-scale repurposing for certain types of composite materials could be possible.

This is significant, as aircraft manufacturers increasingly use composite materials to save weight and lower aircraft fuel burn. Additionally, identifying methods to reuse composite materials could mean reduced waste and a more localised approach to materials sourcing, both key to a circular economy. Lastly, recycling parts consumes less energy than manufacturing new ones.

The initiative converted an end-of-life A380 engine pylon cowl (a ‘secondary structure’ in the jargon) into a smaller-sized panel that can be installed on the pylon of a A320neo, once re-certified.

Progress through Partnership

JEC hosts its prestigious Composites Innovation Awards every January. The Awards are not limited to aerospace and are highly competitive, receiving more than 170 applications each year.

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The Award in the circularity and recycling category went to Toray—the supplier and manufacturer of the Toray Cetex® thermoplastic composite material used for the original A380 cowl—for overseeing the initiative. “This recognition from the JEC shows how complex challenges, including high-value recycling, are best tackled through partnership,” says Isabell Gradert, Airbus VP Central Research and Technology, who represented the company at the January 2026 ceremony. “We exist in a complex aerospace supply chain in a hyper-connected world. If a company comes up with a solution on its own, that’s a great story. If an entire industry does it together, that’s transformative, since it can lead to something bigger!”

Airbus was part of the consortium that won the award in this category in 2025. Moreover, two other Airbus-led projects won prizes in their categories this year, including one also linked to thermoplastics. A fourth project finished in the top three in its category.

Recycling an A380 secondary Structure for Use on an A320neo: Who Does What?

The consortium’s core innovation, a thermoplastic A380 engine pylon cowl, was ‘re-manufactured’ into a new, smaller A320neo pylon cowl. The quality and mechanical properties of this repurposed part are such that it is indistinguishable from a brand-new panel, potentially opening the way for scalable applications and both line-fit and retrofit introduction of recycled panels.

Data gathered from the initiative will inform Airbus' eco-design strategy, whereby new components are engineered from the outset to maximise material recovery and reuse at the end of their lifecycle.

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Did You Know?

The A380 contains over 10,000 flying parts made from different varieties of carbon fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composites. This makes the aircraft an ideal platform for testing and validating recycled material recovery practices

What is Circularity?

The ‘Circular Economy’ is an economic model that optimises the use and reuse of products, components and materials, while maintaining their integrity for as long as possible and minimising waste, emissions and energy consumption, through the appropriate design and continuous improvement of systems and business models.

Composites are difficult to recycle, which is why investigating new and innovative approaches is crucial. This has the potential to reduce reliance on virgin materials and the energy-intensive processes that often accompany them.