Mission

Our mission

The idea of an institute focused on remanufacturing in Scotland originated in 2012 at the University of Strathclyde. Partnering with Zero Waste Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council, a proposal was created and presented to the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Institute for Remanufacturing (SIR) was approved on 29th Sept 2014 and officially launched on 21st January 2015 by Richard Lochhead, Scotland’s Environment Secretary.

SIR is hosted at the University of Strathclyde and was funded by Scottish Funding Council and Zero Waste Scotland with an investment of £1.3M over three years. It has since received additional support from Zero Waste Scotland to continue its activities in stimulating and supporting the remanufacturing community in Scotland. It is one of only six centres of excellence for remanufacturing globally with others in Singapore, New York, South Korea, Germany and Beijing.

The key objective of SIR is to stimulate and support the remanufacturing community in Scotland and beyond, by providing collaborative links between academia and industry, supporting funding opportunities, through education and training, and providing a central hub of knowledge and expertise to allow business to develop and sustain remanufacturing business models.

“We want to move away from the current situation where valuable materials often go to waste, to a circular economy where things are designed to be used over and over again” – Richard Lochhead, speaking at the launch of the Scottish Institute for Remanufacturing in January 2015.