The transition towards a circular economy proposes to deliver sustainable, lower carbon opportunities to society, governments and companies. This paper focuses on finding barriers encountered during remanufacturing activities and interpreting the barriers by using a framework for dynamic capabilities. Dynamic capabilities enable companies to adjust to changes in their business activities. In the literature, remanufacturing is described as a process to restore used products to a ‘as good as new’ condition, through a series of steps. This paper discusses the analysis of in-depth interviews with a selection of five remanufacturing companies. The companies are from the following sectors: automotive, IT, photocopiers, industrial robots and building components. Results show they have a tendency to put technical capabilities at the core of their research, leaving ‘softer’ capabilities, such as sensing and learning, less developed.