Over the summer the SALIENT project, brought together 16 Horizon Europe projects for a cross-fertilisation workshop focused on accelerating lightweighting innovation across Europe. The participating projects span advanced materials, sustainable manufacturing, digital tools, and circular economy strategies, all central to Europe’s green and digital transition.

Lightweighting is a vital enabler of the EU Green Deal, the twin transition, and industrial competitiveness. Yet many initiatives still move forward in isolation, with limited opportunities to align their insights, share key performance indicators (KPIs), and scale promising solutions. The SALIENT workshop set out to change this by creating a collaborative platform where projects could exchange openly, explore synergies, and link their results to broader policy and funding opportunities.

Discussions led to identifying what the projects are working towards:

• 40% lower CO₂ emissions through advanced solid-state joining

• 85% material recovery with bio-based composites in aircraft structures

• 42% weight reduction in vehicle components using carbon-fibre thermoplastics

• 20% lead-time savings through digitalised metal manufacturing

The SALIENT workshop tackled this challenge head-on by providing a collaborative platform for projects to:

By connecting previously fragmented efforts, the workshop turned individual progress into shared momentum, accelerating decarbonisation, enabling new pathways for circular materials, and fostering stronger collaboration across sectors.

To bring these advances closer to industry stakeholders and citizens, a two-page overview has been produced highlighting the collective results and the opportunities ahead for European lightweighting innovation.

View the document

 

 

 

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