At SMM Hamburg, Green Marine Europe highlights cooperation as a driver for a more circular maritime sector
On 1 September, Green Marine Europe took part in the European Innovation at SEA conference, held during SMM Hamburg. Cherif Belgaroui, Program Manager at Green Marine Europe, joined several partners from the Horizon Europe CirclesOfLife project to discuss the role of European cooperation in accelerating the environmental and circular transition of the maritime sector.
Bringing together around 50 maritime professionals, European Innovation at SEA gathered industry stakeholders, experts and partners from European projects around a common challenge: how can cooperation, innovation and knowledge sharing be strengthened to support the transformation of the entire European maritime value chain?
During the second panel of the morning, Cherif Belgaroui, Program Manager at Green Marine Europe, joined Jorinus Kalis, Manager Process Innovation at Damen and CirclesOfLife Project Coordinator, Stephan Wurst, Managing Partner at BALance Technology Consulting GmbH, and Matthias Krause, Manager Research and Development – Materials and Fabrication at the Center of Maritime Technologies (CMT).
The discussion highlighted the importance of cooperation at European level to advance environmental and circular practices, while also helping turn innovation into practical implementation across the maritime sector.
CirclesOfLife: addressing the entire ship lifecycle
Green Marine Europe is a member of the CirclesOfLife consortium, a project funded under the Horizon Europe program and coordinated by Damen Research Development & Innovation.
The project aims to improve material circularity and reduce the environmental impacts associated with the different non-operational stages of a ship’s lifecycle: design, construction, maintenance, repair, retrofitting and end-of-life.
CirclesOfLife is developing several tools to better measure and manage these impacts, including a Shipyard Environmental Performance Index (SEPI) designed to assess the environmental performance of shipyard activities, as well as tools to track materials and the environmental performance of vessels throughout their lifecycle.
The objective is twofold: to make impacts more measurable and comparable, and to provide companies with sufficiently practical tools to support decision-making and continuous improvement.
Green Marine Europe, bridging innovation and implementation
Within the consortium, Green Marine Europe contributes in particular to stakeholder engagement and to the dissemination and exploitation of the project’s results, with one central objective: creating the conditions for the tools and methodologies developed through CirclesOfLife to be understood, tested and progressively adopted by European maritime stakeholders.
This role closely reflects Cherif Belgaroui’s responsibilities at Green Marine Europe. As Program Manager, he leads the development of the environmental certification program in Europe and supports shipowners, shipyards and ports throughout their continuous improvement journey and the verification process. He also coordinates the evolution of the certification framework and facilitates the program’s advisory committees and technical working groups.
His participation in the SMM panel therefore reflects the broader work carried out by Green Marine Europe within CirclesOfLife: bridging the results of European research and innovation with their practical uptake by the maritime industry.
Over recent months, Green Marine Europe has contributed to discussions on how CirclesOfLife results can be translated into operational value for companies, as well as on the conditions required to support their adoption beyond the duration of the project. The work also explores potential links between the knowledge developed through CirclesOfLife and the future evolution of Green Marine Europe’s certification framework for shipyards.
From European cooperation to industrial implementation
The discussions in Hamburg highlighted a key challenge for the maritime sector’s environmental transition: technical solutions can only deliver their full potential if they can be shared, adapted to operational realities and integrated into business practices.
For Green Marine Europe, participating in collaborative European projects such as CirclesOfLife provides an opportunity to contribute precisely at this interface between innovation, technical expertise and industrial implementation, while involving maritime value-chain stakeholders in the development of solutions.
Following the panel, the conversation continued during an English-language edition of the Maritiem Inside podcast, featuring Jorinus Kalis, Cherif Belgaroui and Rosanne van Houwelingen in a more informal discussion on innovation and cooperation within the European maritime sector.