Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, has signed an agreement with Oceanic Environmental Cables (OEC) for the recovery and recycling of multiple unused subsea telecommunications cables.
OEC is Europe’s first and only cable recovery and recycling company offering a sustainable and circular economy-based solution for Out-of-Service subsea cables. Thanks to a unique and patent-pending recycling methodology, OEC dismantles, separates, and sorts all components of unused cables, repurposing or remanufacturing them back into the value chain, thus minimizing waste and maximizing resource utilization.
Under the agreement, OEC will acquire from Sparkle over 22,000 km of telegraph, coaxial and fiber optic subsea cables laid in the Mediterranean, generating an estimated saving of more than 35,000 tons of CO₂e through secondary material manufacturing reuse.
Sparkle’s Out-of-Service submarine cables will be taken from the seabed and transported to the facilities of OEC and its partners, which will dismantle, separate, clean, and analyze the various components (optical fibre, copper, steel, aluminum, HDPE, and LDPE) until they are processed into high-quality regranulates. OEC will then return the materials with renewed value to industrial use as secondary raw materials.
“We are proud to be among the first global operators to undertake such an innovative initiative, promoting circular economy practices and reducing environmental impact”, said Enrico Bagnasco, CEO of Sparkle. “The collaboration with OEC represents a concrete step toward a more sustainable future, where resources from the past can be recovered and transformed into opportunities for the present and the future."
''We are thrilled to partner with Sparkle on this important initiative. By retrieving and recycling these redundant cables, we are not only reducing the congestion and waste on the Mediterranean seabed but also reducing the need for virgin materials in manufacturing. This process significantly lowers carbon emissions and embodies the principles of a circular economy’’, said Horst Brockmueller, CEO of OEC.
The collaboration with OEC is part of Sparkle's broader commitment to make resources more efficient, reduce emissions, and create a sustainable supply chain, consistent with the TIM Group's principles of sustainability and responsibility.
About Sparkle
Sparkle is TIM Group’s Global Operator, first international service provider in Italy and among the top worldwide, offering a full range of infrastructure and global connectivity services – capacity, IP, SD-WAN, colocation, IoT connectivity, roaming and voice - to national and international Carriers, OTTs, ISPs, Media/Content Providers, and multinational enterprises. A major player in the submarine cable industry, Sparkle owns and manages a network of more than 600,000 km of fiber spanning from Europe to Africa and the Middle East, the Americas and Asia. Its sales force is active worldwide and distributed over 33 countries.
Find out more about Sparkle following its X and LinkedIn profiles or visiting the website tisparkle.com
About Oceanic Environmental Cables
Oceanic Environmental Cables GmbH (‘OEC’) is a European head-quartered, globally operational, salvage company providing sustainable end-to-end decommissioning solutions for cable owners and stakeholders in the subsea cable industry. OEC are proud to offer a full turnkey solution, including taking over licenses, permits and all risks and liabilities for these legacy cables. The company has developed a unique method of dismantling them with approximately 1% waste, ensuring all materials are upcycled and re-entered into the value chain, back into industrial use as secondary raw materials and by doing so, OEC creates a high value, cost-efficient circular economy for the telecommunications industry.
OEC has successfully recovered 25,000+ km of cable and have recently acquired over 80,000km of Out-of -Service cables ranging from the Pacific to the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
Find out more about OEC by following its website and LinkedIn profile. OECOPS.COM
Rome, 14 January 2025
