Creative Circular Cities Advances Pre-Commercial Procurement with Selection of Phase 2 Contractors

The Creative Circular Cities project has reached another important milestone in its pioneering Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process. Following the successful completion of Phase 1: Solution Design, two contractors — Superhood Oy (Finland) and INC Innovation Center (Germany) — have now been selected to continue into Phase 2: Prototype Development and Testing.

The CCC PCP is the first innovation procurement processes of its kind within the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme and aims to develop new circular economy solutions for cities through research and development activities. Instead of purchasing existing products, the PCP framework supports the co-development, prototyping and testing of innovative solutions that do not yet exist on the market.
The procurement challenge focuses on creating an accessible and unified platform that helps citizens discover and use circular economy services more easily in their local communities. Throughout Phase 1, five contractors from across the Baltic Sea Region worked closely with the CCC Buyers’ Group through mentoring sessions and collaborative feedback processes to further develop their concepts.
Following the evaluation of the submitted solution designs, Superhood Oy and INC Innovation Center achieved the highest-ranked proposals and will now move forward to prototype development and real-life testing.

The selection marks an exciting next step for the project and for innovation-driven circular transition in the Baltic Sea Region. During Phase 2, the selected contractors will move from concept development into prototype creation, technical development and real-life validation of their proposed solutions. Working closely with the CCC Buyers’ Group and local stakeholders, Superhood Oy and INC Innovation Center will further refine their concepts and pilot them.

Superhood’s proposed “CircularCity” platform combines a neighbourhood-based local discovery platform with a gamified circular living system, enabling citizens to discover circular services, participate in community challenges and earn rewards for circular actions such as repair, reuse and surplus food rescue.
INC Innovation Center’s “ReMatch” platform focuses on the recirculation of critical materials and products through a multilingual digital marketplace that combines gamified citizen engagement, traceable material flows and city-led recovery campaigns.

While Phase 2 will begin with developing a piloting plan and finalising the platform prototypes, at the end of summer these solutions will be tested in the city of Turku with local stakeholders, including citizens and circular economy service providers. During the real life testing, the contractors will learn how their proposed solution works on the ground and what aspects of it need further refinement to develop functional prototypes that respond to identified city needs, improve citizens’ access to circular economy services and demonstrate how digital innovation can support more sustainable and circular lifestyles across the Baltic Sea Region.

The project “Creative Circular Cities” is co-funded by the EU’s Interreg Baltic Sea Region programme.

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