NEW ways to extend the life of resource-hungry products were discussed at a Sino-UK summit, co-organised by the University of Brighton.

The event, the first of its kind aimed at fostering co-operation in remanufacturing between the UK and China, was attended by representatives of the UK’s innovation agency Innovate UK, the British Embassy in China, the Welsh Government and China’s Ministry for Information and Industry Technology.

It was co-organised by Dr Yan Wang, senior lecturer in the University of Brighton’s School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, who works in the field of sustainable manufacturing and currently is a Visiting Scholar at China’s National Key Laboratory for Remanufacturing.

She said: “Remanufacturing adds value to waste streams by returning items to working order rather than reducing them to their raw material value only.

“Remanufacturing, which is an important element of the circular economy, is growing rapidly globally. The UK is a EU leader in remanufacturing and China is potentially the largest market for remanufactured products and services and play very important roles in supply chain in global remanufacturing.

“Collaborating with China presents great potential for the manufacturing/remanufacturing community.”