CORE Innovation Group takes on 8 new EU research projects

CORE Innovation Group takes on 8 new EU research projects

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CORE Innovation Group and CORE Innovation Centre are continuing our trailblazing EU research journey, having secured a total of 8 new Horizon Europe projects so far this year.

Our new research projects, which focus on the digital and green transitions, will help us take our expertise even further, always focusing on our three CORE missions: Digital Transformation, Digital Tools and Digital Twins.

With these additions, CORE Innovation's portfolio now spans more than 40 research projects, completed and ongoing, with our research budget growing by over €3 million. Below is a closer look at each new project and the role we're playing in it.

ACT2FLEX

ACT2Flex aims to focus on a major industrial challenge: turning rigid, energy-heavy factories into flexible systems that can sync their production with the availability of renewable energy. By combining physical retrofits with a "Flexibility Intelligence Toolbox", the project will help industrial sites move away from fossil fuel dependency. These solutions will be put to the test at HALCOR’s copper facilities in Greece and KRONOS’s titanium dioxide plant in Belgium.

CORE Innovation Centre’s role in the project will be to act as the digital architect. Our team will design the AI-driven "intelligence" that makes industrial flexibility possible, building the middleware to handle complex data flows and creating predictive models for energy market forecasting. Beyond the technical development, our team will ensure these tools integrate seamlessly within the project’s Digital Twins, overseeing everything from pilot validation to the final strategy for bringing these technologies to the wider market.

AGILE

AGILE aims to transform energy-intensive process industries by making them more flexible, energy-efficient, and sustainable. At its core, AGILE tackles a major industrial challenge: how to adapt production in real time to changing feedstocks, energy availability, and market demand—without compromising performance or sustainability. To achieve this, AGILE combines innovative low-carbon equipment with advanced digital technologies. From greener copper recycling and waste heat recovery to hydrogen production through low-temperature electrolysis, the project demonstrates how Net Zero Transition technologies can enable cleaner and more resilient industrial processes. These solutions are supported by real-time monitoring, advanced control systems, and Digital Twins, allowing industries to optimise energy use, materials, and emissions as operations evolve.

CORE Innovation Centre plays a key role in AGILE’s AI-driven digital backbone, with a strong focus on the EYDAP wastewater-to-hydrogen demonstration use case. CORE develops smart, lightweight models that capture how the hydrogen production process can safely and efficiently adapt to changing operating conditions. These models are integrated into a hybrid Digital Twin, supporting scenario analysis, operational optimisation, and next-generation Energy Management System (EMS) capabilities. In addition, CORE Innovation Centre leads the development of the Digital Product Passport (DPP) across all AGILE use cases. The DPP enables secure and interoperable tracking of product, energy, and emissions data across the value chain, in line with emerging EU regulatory frameworks. Our team also contributes to AI agents that support feedstock adaptation and energy optimisation, helping pave the way toward self-optimising, data-driven industrial systems connected to European Data Spaces.

CREDIBLE

CREDIBLE is a Horizon Europe project developing an interoperable digital ecosystem for circular construction, connecting Building Information Modelling (BIM), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), digital twins and AI-driven decision-support to guide buildings through design, renovation, adaptation and deconstruction. The project also defines Digital Product Passports (DPPs) for traceability and embodied carbon reporting, and develops modular, disassemblable building components to enable reuse and low-waste deconstruction, with solutions validated across real pilot projects.

CORE Innovation Centre holds a central, innovation-driving role in the consortium. We start with the project's baseline analysis and KPI definition, establishing the key measurable targets for the whole initiative. Our team also leads the Development of Digital Tools work package, overseeing critical components including BIM-to-LCA integration and the AI-driven decision-support system. We're also directly responsible for developing the project's digital twins for real-time monitoring, predicting building performance and simulating material reuse scenarios across the building lifecycle. Finally, CORE Innovation Centre designs the dashboards and user interfaces that bring it all together, translating complex data from BIM, LCA and the digital twins into clear, actionable insights for every stakeholder in the ecosystem.

EUROCZFACTORY

EuroCzFactory aims to re-establish a resilient, competitive, and sustainable European value chain for ingot and wafer manufacturing, significantly reducing the EU’s strategic dependency on Asian imports. The project integrates next generation "Made in Europe" crystal pullers and circular wafering processes with a holistic digitalisation framework to cut energy consumption by approximately 40% and improve production yields. By validating these technologies in industrial pilots, the project seeks to deliver a bankable, scalable factory blueprint (5–20 GWp/year) that supports the EU's Net-Zero Industry Act targets.

CORE Innovation leads the digitalisation framework consolidation, designing the Agentic Digital Twin (ADT) and the underlying data orchestration platform to optimise crystal growth quality and safety. A key technical contribution is the development of an autonomous AI agent and a Large Language Model (LLM)-powered chatbot, which serves as a Human-Machine Interface (HMI) to allow operators to interact with complex machinery using natural language. Furthermore, our team spearheads the exploitation and innovation strategy, defining business models and investment roadmaps to ensure the commercial scalability of the project's results.

EUROFMX

EuroFMX aims to establish the first European ecosystem of trustworthy Generative AI and "autonomisation" frontier models specifically tailored for the manufacturing sector, reinforcing EU technological sovereignty and competitiveness. The project seeks to transition the industry from rigid automation to proactive "Manufacturing-X" systems by developing physics-informed foundation models (PIGNNs), a federated AI computing continuum, and industrial-grade data spaces. Validated through high-impact pilots in sectors such as automotive, aerospace, and robotics, EuroFMX also focuses on workforce upskilling and ensuring compliance with EU AI regulations.

CORE Innovation Centre is a key technology provider focusing on Agentic AI Orchestration and the development of Symbiotic human-AI manufacturing immune systems. CORE contributes significantly to the Open euroFMX Integrated Development & Finetuning Environment (IDFE) and Agentic Digital Manufacturing Platforms, as well as the development of Conversational LLMs and Small Language Models (SLMs) for industrial use. Additionally, our team provides software and methodology for Open GPINN (Graph Physics-Informed Neural Networks) Models and supports the definition of next-generation industrial operating strategies.

SUNRISE

SUNRISE will deliver the most appropriate manufacturing solutions enabling a new generation of lightweight, recyclable, highly customised integrated photovoltaics (IPV) products that combine mechanical robustness, high-efficiency and aesthetic versatility with circular-by-design principles.

CORE Innovation Centre will design and implement a FRP-PV Digital Product Passport that will serve as a secure, AI-enhanced digital infrastructure that collects, manages, and shares lifecycle data of glass-free photovoltaic (PV) modules and their associated composite structures, ensuring compliance with traceability and circularity requirements. In parallel, CORE will develop an AI-powered Decision Support System (DSS) to support the design and manufacturing of FRP-PV products, ensuring that performance, manufacturability, sustainability and circularity considerations are addressed simultaneously and early in the design process.

SYSTEMICO

SYSTEMICO will develop a systemic multisectoral, multi-stakeholder approach, developing joint actions for coupling circularity and climate mitigation in industry, cities and regions, in four demonstration and three replication sites around Europe, linked to five EU Mission Cities and three Circular Cities and Regions Initiative activities' sites, supporting the implementation of the “Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities (2025)” Mission, and connected with other initiatives such as with H4Cs and Regional Innovation Valleys.

CORE Innovation Centre leads the definition of digital architecture, interoperability pathways, and conceptual data models supporting the Holistic Regional System (HRS) and the SYSTEMICO Platform, as well as the mapping and assessment of heterogeneous data sources. In addition, MFA outputs will be translated into a Predictive Resource Logistics Module, operationalising material and water flow scenarios within HRSs and integrating dynamic inputs (e.g. LCA, LCC, DPPs, public data) to quantify emissions, costs, and socioeconomic and environmental indicators. Finally, CORE leads the design and deployment of a cloud-agnostic middleware, powered by containerised microservices and orchestrated via Kubernetes, enabling secure, scalable, and harmonised data operations across the SYSTEMICO ecosystem.

SCALE-AEM

SCALE-AEM is a Horizon Europe (Clean Hydrogen JU) project aiming to scale up and automate the manufacturing of Anion Exchange Membrane (AEM) electrolysers for green hydrogen production. The project develops an industrial pilot line for 10–100 kW stacks, with a clear pathway toward gigawatt-scale production capacity. It advances key components, including PFAS-free membranes, PGM-free electrodes, and PCB-based bipolar plates, to reduce costs and improve performance and durability. The project integrates automation, digital twins, and AI-driven process monitoring to enhance quality and manufacturing efficiency. In parallel, it applies circular design principles to enable easier disassembly, reuse, and recycling of stack components.

Our role in SCALE-AEM focuses on leading the project’s communication, dissemination, and stakeholder engagement activities. Our communication team works closely with all partners to ensure that the consortium effectively reaches relevant target groups and maximises the visibility and impact of its research results and technological solutions. We coordinate and implement the overall communication and dissemination strategy, develop a strong and consistent visual identity for the project, and ensure clear, accessible messaging across all channels. This includes managing digital presence (website and social media), producing communication materials (brochures, factsheets, newsletters, posters), engaging with industry press, and supporting participation in events and clustering activities. Through these actions, we ensure that SCALE-AEM’s results are effectively transmitted to scientific, industrial, policy, and public audiences.

Together, these eight new projects reinforce CORE's position at the forefront of Europe's digital and green transitions, spanning industrial flexibility, green hydrogen, semiconductor manufacturing, generative AI for industry, next-generation photovoltaics, circular cities and circular construction. We look forward to working alongside our partners across Europe to bring these technologies from research to real-world impact.