Circularity as an Opportunity for Irish MedTech
- Circuleire IMR
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
The Macro Picture: Resilient, But Tested
Ireland's economic performance over recent decades has been exceptional. Manufacturing output has grown broadly across pharma, medtech, engineering, and food. Traditional manufacturing has grown over 50% in recent years, while modern manufacturing has grown over 100%. The scale of that achievement comes into sharper focus against the European backdrop: according to IBEC's Q4 2025 Economic Outlook, Irish manufacturing output grew by 82% over the six years to 2024, compared to just 2.5% across the EU as a whole over the same period.
But the mood is shifting. A Middle East conflict with infrastructure damage projected to affect global energy markets through to 2030 is the defining risk of the moment. This was the message of Fergal O'Brien, IBEC’s Executive Director of Lobbying and Influence, at the opening of the recent Manufacturing the Future 2026, IBEC’s Medtech & Engineering Conference.
O'Brien was measured but direct: quoting the International Energy Agency, he warned that this is not a five-month event, but more like a five-year legacy. Ireland's manufacturing sector is better placed than most, having meaningfully reduced petroleum dependency in recent years. According to the CSO's Business in Ireland 2025 - Emissions and Energy Use by Enterprises, total emissions from Ireland's enterprise economy fell by 12% between 2018 and 2023 despite strong economic growth, while emissions intensity fell by 25% over the same period. But with industry and services still accounting for 40% of total national greenhouse gas emissions in 2023, and energy contract re-pricing coming for businesses currently on fixed terms, O'Brien's call to accelerate decarbonisation efforts is well-founded. His call to action was direct: double down on decarbonisation, accelerate grid upgrades and offshore delivery, and invest in energy-efficient equipment.
Global Manufacturing Under Pressure
Ibec's manufacturing survey results indicate that manufacturer confidence had dropped from 69% to 51% over 2025; trade uncertainty had doubled; 58% of companies were concerned about labour costs; 48% about housing access for staff. Yet 97% were continuing on their AI journey.
Orgalim's Spring 2026 Economics Report projects a return to +1.8% turnover growth for European manufacturing in 2026 after three difficult years, with electrical engineering, electronics and ICT leading at +2.2%, driven by AI and electrification. The recovery is real, said Ulrich Adam, Director General of Orgalim, but fragile and now directly threatened by the Middle East energy situation.
Adam also referenced Orgalim's Simplification Report and how EU regulatory simplification efforts have delivered around €7–8 billion in savings for European technology industries through the Omnibus II initiative, but with a further €22 billion in annual compliance costs already sitting in the EU's legislative pipeline, the industry remains in net negative territory on regulatory burden. His call was for course correction rather than retreat. The regulatory frameworks being simplified include the very instruments designed to drive supply chain transparency, material accountability, and decarbonisation investment. Getting the balance right is one of the defining policy challenges of 2026.
The 2021 semiconductor crisis was an inflection point and permanently changed how Jaguar Land Rover approaches supply chain transparency, as explained by Dr Heiko Gierhardt, Director of Material Fulfilment. JLR now maps 60,000 to 100,000 nodes across its supply network, arguing that strategic inventory is insurance, not inefficiency, bringing the operational reality of global supply chain management into sharp focus.
The Dexcom’s Galway facility came in on time and under budget. Adrian Furey, VP of Global Supply Chain offered an honest caveat about whether he could repeat that outcome under current conditions: the contract stability, supply certainty, and cost predictability that made the build possible in 2022 are not the environment manufacturers face in 2026.
The evolution of the geopolitical and economic landscape evolution seen from these three perspectives: the European policy environment, global automotive supply chain management, and the experience of building a major greenfield medtech facility in Ireland from scratch, paints the picture of global manufacturing under pressure.
From Macro to Floor Level: People, Technology, and the Lean Foundation
Technology investments succeed when people and culture come first. Malcolm Jeffers of the International Academy of Automation Engineering (IAAE) framed it as a shift from product to process to purpose. Companies that connect their people to the meaning of what they make will, he said, have the strongest competitive advantage.
Mag O'Keeffe of Stryker, illustrated this with the company's additive manufacturing journey: a deliberate focus on talent and culture, with people given freedom to experiment, led to an unexpected outcome: a digital flagship that grew organically from a purpose-led environment rather than a technology mandate.
Domhnall Carroll of Digital Manufacturing Ireland noted that roughly half of DMI's activities have shifted from technology implementation to workforce culture.
Jeffers put a number on the challenge: Deloitte research shows companies are currently spending 93% of their AI budgets on technology and only 7% on the people expected to use it. BCG's recommended alternative, 70% on people and processes, 20% on technology and data, 10% on algorithms, points in exactly the opposite direction. Dr Gunter Beitinger of Siemens AG reinforced the point: trust, transparency, and shared language, he mentioned, must precede technology deployment, not follow it.
Sustainability in Manufacturing: From Ambition to Action
CIRCULÉIRE contributed to the sustainability session alongside speakers from SEAI, Boston Scientific, and Galco, with a keynote from KPMG's Terence McGovern, reinforced the global picture for manufacturing with Irish-specific detail.
McGovern's overview of Ireland's grid highlighted the scale of what lies ahead: electricity demand set to more than double over the next decade, driven largely by data centre growth, while industry decarbonisation remains hard because 80% of industrial energy still comes from gas and oil, not electricity.
SEAI's Damhnait Gleeson made the business case plainly: energy efficiency and conservation are the cheapest wins available, and not acting is already costing money. Galco's Ed Byrne was equally direct: don't wait for perfect conditions, start engaging with the ecosystem, and your customers will thank you for it. Boston Scientific’s Sean Dowd outlined the work they had done on their Galway site to drive the manufacturing plant towards carbon neutrality. CIRCULÉIRE’s Paul McCormack Cooney pointed out that now that we have made huge strides in energy efficiency, we need to do the same with our materials, components and products.
Irish Medtech's own Strategy 2026–2029 makes it explicit: green public procurement is increasingly favouring suppliers with strong environmental credentials. Alcon's Paul O'Sullivan put it directly: sustainability will increasingly become a binary tender criterion, and companies will win or lose business based on their ability to demonstrate genuine commitment, as highlighted in the final supply chain session.
The Circular Economy: Addressing Manufacturing Pressures by Design
The current uneven terrain - supply chain vulnerability, energy dependency, material scarcity, and regulatory complexity - is precisely what the circular economy can address by design.
Reducing dependence on finite and geopolitically concentrated raw materials, keeping products and components in use longer, building shorter and more legible supply chains - these strategies build resilience against exactly the pressures the conference spent a day describing. When Heiko Gierhardt from JLR listed what keeps supply chain professionals awake: "the regulation, the ships, the wars, the fires, the floods", he was describing a world increasingly shaped by climate instability and resource scarcity.
Ireland's medtech sits at the centre of this challenge. The sector's dependence on critical raw materials, complex global supply chains, and energy-intensive manufacturing makes it acutely exposed to exactly the pressures the conference described. Significantly, Irish Medtech's Strategy 2026–2029 identifies supply chain resilience and circular design as explicit strategic priorities for the sector, calling on companies to promote circular-design approaches to reduce environmental impact and enhance resource efficiency.
As CIRCULÉIRE's Director of Circular Economy, Dr Geraldine Brennan explains: “If you see circularity as a compliance requirement, you’ll miss the opportunity. But if you see it as a strategic innovation agenda, it becomes a way to rethink your R&D pipeline, as well as your design choices and your supply chains.” With 80% of a product's environmental impact locked in at the design stage, that is where the opportunity lies.
The discussions on people, technology, and culture in the recent conference seem to revolve around the same insight: that purpose-driven organisations attract and retain better talent. Jeffers cited it as a competitive advantage. O'Keeffe demonstrated it through Stryker's additive manufacturing journey. Furey named it as one of the defining qualities of Ireland's manufacturing workforce. A genuine circular economy strategy is exactly the kind of purpose that manufacturing organisations can offer their people. Research cited in CIRCULÉIRE's MedTech Sectoral Guide found that 44% of business school students globally are willing to accept a lower salary to work for a company with better environmental practices. Circularity is not just an operational agenda; it attracts and retains talent.
The opportunities presented by the circular economy now have a national policy framework: the Circular Economy Strategy 2026–2028. The policy framework is there. The sector's own strategy points in the same direction. The business case, as a full day at Manufacturing the Future 2026 made clear, has never been stronger for the deployment of circularity in Irish MedTech.
CIRCULÉIRE supports Irish manufacturers in transitioning to the circular economy, from first assessment to scaled implementation. Contact us to learn more about the network.
Visit the infographic version of CIRCULÉIRE's MedTech Sectoral Guide.
For additional insights on circular economy skills, jobs, leadership, and innovation in Irish industry, download CIRCULÉIRE Circular Skills Insights Report 2025.
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