The Manufacturing Podcast with Fexingo: Factories, Supply Chains, and Industrial Business

Episode 82 of The Manufacturing Podcast explores how a factory in Bavaria, Germany, is turning apple pomace—the leftover pulp from juice and cider production—into a leather-like material called AppleSkin. Lucas and Luna visit the facility, meet the founder, and break down the numbers: 30,000 tons of apple waste diverted annually, 400,000 square meters of material produced, and the environmental im...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna visit a Swiss factory outside Basel that is turning discarded fishing nets and ocean plastic into high-quality 3D printer filament. The company, OceanWorks AG, processes 200 tons of waste annually, reducing microplastic pollution while supplying the growing desktop manufacturing market. Lucas explains the proprietary cleaning and extrusion process that removes salt,...

Steel production accounts for roughly 7 percent of global CO2 emissions. But a factory in Sweden is proving that heavy industry can decarbonise without sacrificing output. In this episode, Lucas and Luna visit Ovako's Hofors plant, where industrial heat pumps are capturing waste heat from the steel-making process and feeding it back into the factory's energy system. The result: a 50 percent reduct...

Lucas and Luna visit a factory in Jiangsu, China, that recycles decommissioned solar panels into high-performance roofing tiles and insulation. They break down the numbers: 78 million tons of solar waste expected by 2050, and how one company is turning a looming environmental problem into a $2 billion addressable market. The hosts discuss the chemical process for separating silicon, silver, and gl...

Indonesia is on track to become the world's second-largest battery producer by 2027, leapfrogging traditional manufacturing hubs. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how the nation's ban on raw nickel ore exports in 2020 forced global investment into domestic smelting and refining. They visit the Morowali Industrial Park on Sulawesi, home to a $4 billion nickel processing complex, and unpack t...

Episode 77 of The Manufacturing Podcast looks at a factory in Germany that is solving one of the renewable energy industry's stickiest waste problems: what to do with decommissioned wind turbine blades. Those blades are made of fiberglass and epoxy resin — incredibly strong, but nearly impossible to recycle. This episode follows a plant in the port of Rotterdam that shreds the blades, separates th...

Episode 76 of The Manufacturing Podcast visits a factory in Jaén, Spain, that turns olive pomace — the leftover pulp and pits from olive oil production — into biodegradable bioplastics. Co-hosts Lucas and Luna walk through the process: how the factory extracts cellulose and lignin from the waste, combines them with a natural plasticizer, and produces pellets that can replace petroleum-based plasti...

Lucas and Luna visit a factory in rural Tennessee that takes sawdust and wood chips from nearby sawmills — material that would otherwise rot and release methane — and bakes it into biochar, a stable form of carbon that can be buried in soil for centuries. They walk through the numbers: 45,000 tons of CO₂ sequestered per year, a $15 million investment from the USDA, and a price tag of $500 per ton...

Kentucky produces 95% of the world's bourbon, and with it comes millions of tons of spent grain called 'stillage.' This episode visits a factory in Louisville that takes that waste — previously dumped into rivers or spread on fields — and runs it through anaerobic digesters to produce methane, then refines that methane into methanol and other industrial chemicals. We break down the numbers: one di...

In this episode of The Manufacturing Podcast, Lucas and Luna visit a factory in Switzerland that has commercialized atmospheric water generation. They explore the technology behind extracting water from air, the energy efficiency gains that have made it viable, and the factory's plan to produce 10,000 units per year by 2027. The hosts discuss the specific compressor and filtration system, the 30-l...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how a century-old textile factory in Kyoto, Japan, is transforming discarded kimono silk into high-performance industrial fibers used in aerospace composites and medical sutures. The factory, run by the Yamashita family for four generations, processes 12 tons of silk waste annually, selling material to Boeing and Johnson & Johnson. Lucas breaks down the econ...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how a factory in Belgium is turning coffee grounds into biofuel. They discuss the process, the scale of the operation, and the potential impact on reducing waste and carbon emissions. The episode focuses on the specifics of the technology and the business case behind it, offering a concrete example of industrial circular economy. #CoffeeGrounds #Biofuel #Bel...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how a factory in Detroit, Michigan, is using AI-powered sorting and chemical recycling to turn mixed plastic waste into high-quality 3D printer filament. The facility, operated by a startup called ReForm, processes 50 tons of plastic per day, diverting it from landfills and producing filament that sells for $25 per kilogram. Lucas breaks down the technology:...

Lucas and Luna visit a factory in the Netherlands that is turning cow manure into biodegradable bioplastics. They explore the process: how a dairy farm's waste is processed into lactic acid, then polymerized into polylactic acid (PLA) - a plastic that can replace petroleum-based packaging. They discuss the economics: the factory processes 100,000 tons of manure per year, producing 10,000 tons of b...

In this episode of The Manufacturing Podcast, Lucas and Luna visit a dairy processing plant in Denmark that captures volatile organic compounds from butter production and sells them to the fragrance industry. They explain the science of headspace extraction, the economics of turning an odor problem into a $2 million annual revenue stream, and why the perfume company Givaudan is buying factory air....

Lucas and Luna visit a Singapore-based biotech company that is growing animal-free leather from mushroom mycelium. They break down the fermentation process, the cost challenge of scaling to compete with cowhide at $5 per square foot, and why luxury brands like Gucci are testing samples. Plus: the surprising environmental math — 99% less water and no tanning chemicals — versus a cattle industry res...

In this episode of The Manufacturing Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore a French factory that transforms grape pomace—the skins, seeds, and stems left over from winemaking—into a leather-like material called Vegea. They discuss the scale of wine waste in France, the process of converting it into a durable textile, and how this innovation fits into the broader shift toward sustainable materials in fas...

In this episode of The Manufacturing Podcast with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a surprising industrial innovation: a factory in Texas that captures waste heat from its own processes and uses it to power an adjacent data center's cooling system. We break down the technology—a specialized absorption chiller that turns 250-degree Fahrenheit exhaust into chilled water—and the economics: the factory...

Episode 64 of The Manufacturing Podcast looks at a factory in Texas that is 3D-printing houses using recycled concrete aggregate from demolished buildings. Lucas walks through how the process works — from crushing old foundations to printing walls layer by layer — and why this approach could cut construction waste by 60 percent. Luna asks about the cost per square foot, the speed of printing, and...

Episode 63 of The Manufacturing Podcast explores how a UK-based metal recycling factory, RegenMet, uses computer vision and robotic sorting to recover high-purity aluminium from household waste. Lucas and Luna walk through the specific technology—hyperspectral cameras paired with a neural network trained on 500,000 images—that lets the plant achieve 97 percent purity, compared to the industry aver...

In episode 62 of The Manufacturing Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore how a Belgian factory near Ghent converts over 30,000 tons of spent coffee grounds from European coffee shops into biodiesel and solid biofuel. They break down the numbers: each ton of coffee grounds yields about 200 liters of biodiesel, and the process uses less energy than palm oil refining. The factory buys grounds for €50 per t...

Lucas and Luna visit a factory in Belgium that collects spent coffee grounds from cafes, offices, and train stations and turns them into biodiesel and biomass pellets. They break down the numbers: 20,000 tons of grounds processed annually, 70% conversion efficiency to oil, and a partnership with a major coffee chain that supplies 30% of the feedstock. The hosts also discuss the challenges of scali...

In episode 60 of The Manufacturing Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore a Finnish factory that transforms pine bark, a forestry byproduct, into lightweight carbon fiber. This innovation could reduce the carbon footprint of carbon fiber production by up to 50 percent compared to traditional petroleum-based methods. They discuss the science behind lignin-based carbon fiber, the challenges of scaling from...

Episode 59 of The Manufacturing Podcast visits Burgundy to explore how Vegea, a materials startup, transforms grape skins, seeds, and stems from winemaking into a leather-like fabric called 'wine leather.' Lucas and Luna break down the numbers: 8 kilograms of grape marc yield roughly 1 square meter of material, and Vegea's pilot line in Milan can produce 500,000 square meters annually. They discus...

Episode 58 of The Manufacturing Podcast visits a factory in the Netherlands that processes tulip and other flower waste into pulp for paper and packaging. Lucas and Luna walk through the economics: the factory diverts 15,000 tons of flower stems per year from incineration, replaces about 20 percent of virgin wood pulp in its output, and sells the paper at a premium to flower exporters who use it f...