A smarter approach to plastics selection in the automotive sector: VTT PlasticsCompass

The automotive industry stands at a crossroads. Faced with tightening EU regulations, unpredictable feedstock supply, and consumer pressure for transparency and more sustainable production choices, companies are seeking smarter ways to integrate recycled plastics into vehicles. VTT PlasticsCompass offers a decisive framework to meet these challenges  – streamlining material decisions, elevating efficiency, and accelerating innovation. 

“The whole idea of the VTT PlasticsCompass is that companies are spending extensive resources on what materials to choose, calculating LCA’s, comparing alternatives – and yet the speed of transition simply isn’t fast enough,” explains Jani Pelto, Principal Materials Scientist at VTT.  

“What the Compass offers is a more streamlined and objective way of doing things – based on rigorous testing, and VTT's decades-long expertise with various plastics, polymers, and mixed materials.”

By design, it brings the client's key personnel of sustainability experts, engineers, and marketers into the same decision process, reconciling the company's priorities into clear, actionable material decisions based on rigorously validated recommendations.

With the EU’s forthcoming End-of-Life Vehicles regulation entailing a significant upstream of recycled materials in cars, the VTT PlasticsCompass helps businesses validate feedstocks and plan ahead for compliance.

“The value chain player with the most strained workflow is the brand owner. They carry the responsibility of securing recycled feedstock and validating it. That’s where the Compass can offer the most value,” notes VTT's Senior Scientist on Materials Processing and Circular Solutions, Ugur Kaya. 

The VTT PlasticsCompass offers clear-cut benefits for automotive brand owners, as Pelto explains:

“We offer a fast track that allows very quick screening of what’s available. Additionally, we are well equipped to find and suggest alternatives, and these may often include out-of-the-box solutions our clients may not have considered. We can also connect our clients with suppliers. All this strengthens our clients' operations with flexibility and innovation that may not have been available in the past.”

Consistency and quality assurance are key issues in any product line endeavour, especially in the tightly regulated and ruleset-heavy realm of automotive production. By developing robust recipes, ranking propositions, and offering alternatives, the VTT PlasticsCompass can be utilised to compensate for fluctuations in feedstock and still deliver consistent quality for demanding, unique, and purpose-built parts like vehicle interiors. 

One of the largest hurdles for the automotive industry is the scarcity of suitable recycled feedstock:  

“It is very difficult to find good quality recyclate from the automotive industry itself, so companies are trying to secure feedstocks from textiles, packaging, or home appliances. But it becomes expensive without established disassembly and pretreatment infrastructure," Kaya explains.  

Price, quality, and availability remain constant concerns for vehicle manufacturers, and these concerns will only become heightened in the near future. Compounded by competition with other sectors for the same recycled streams, brand owners must move decisively to secure supply and validate the performance and quality of selected materials.  

Read more on circular plastics, plastic replacing materials and bioplastics in VTT Vice President Jarmo Ropponen’s blog post. 

Pelto highlights another critical advantage of the Compass: impartiality.  

“Suppliers can only offer what they have in stock – be that wood composites or perhaps a certain blend – but we are not selling materials. We are offering consultancy in developing, and when necessary, also developing the very best solution that suits the client's needs, be that something completely new or partially based on existing choices. The Compass is purpose-built to offer our clients the very best choices, period.”

This transparency extends to mass balance accounting and digital product passports, which are gaining traction in the EU.

“Vague certificates are a no-go in the automotive industry. Brand owners want transparency – assurances that used materials have 52% recycled content with no more than a percentage of fluctuation. Customers and regulators want data-driven numbers in black and white, and that's what the Compass offers.” 

For automotive decision-makers facing pressure from regulation, supply scarcity, and market competition, VTT PlasticsCompass is a strategic process for material intelligence – accelerating development, ensuring transparency, and making sustainable production a key driver for securing competitive advantage.

Kaya closes by noting that the inherent value of the VTT PlasticsCompass is undertowed by the value of collaboration with VTT's decades-long expertise: formulation know-how, processing capabilities, testing, validation, and data evaluation – key components in securing a more sustainable future.  

Pelto closes with a reminder:  

“Sustainability means different things in different businesses. The Compass helps you define what it means for your company – and then ensures your material selections reflect that.” 

Explore and download our PlasticsCompass white paper.