The Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme’s project “Unlocking the Potential of Bio-based Value Chains in the Baltic Sea Region” (BalticBiomass4Value) is happy to invite you to the 2^nd International Scientific Conference “Sustainable Bioeconomy Development 2021: Adaptation to Climate Change”, which will be held online on 20-21 May 2021.

On the 20^th of May during the morning session, participants will have the opportunity to hear the keynote speakers from Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Dr. Lucia Rocchi, an Italian scientist conducting research in the fields of economics, sustainability, biodiversity, ecosystem, and circular economy, will introduce the participants to the circular economy and SDGs, their connections for a more sustainable development model. Dr. Martin C. Th. Scholten, an advisor for science diplomacy to future food and nature policies from the Netherlands, will focus on climate-resilient food production in a sustainable bioeconomy and adaptive agricultural practices based on circular resource management. Dr. Gerald Schwarz, who has 15-year background in agri-environmental and rural policy analysis, will introduce the participants to the governance and sustainability implications of agroecological transitions. The presentations will be complemented with valuable discussion on sustainable bioeconomy development.

On the 21^st of May, the conference will begin with the panel discussion, which focuses on the potential scenarios of the development and market uptake of biofuels, biofertilizers, and bioplastics. Environmental, technological and economic factors will be discussed with the leading researchers and bio-based industry representatives from Lithuania, Estonia, Norway, and Sweden.

Perspectives of biofuels will be explored with Dr. Vincent Eijsink, Professor of the Faculty of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and Ahto Oja, Member of the Board of “Balti Biometaan” that was founded with the aim to develop the production of biomethane as a motor fuel in Estonia and the Baltics. Adoption of innovative and sustainable bio-based solutions in agriculture will be discussed with Dr. Audrius Gegeckas, Head of R&D Department at Lithuanian company “Bioenergy LT” that provides innovative and sustainable high-biotech solutions improving crop productivity and maintaining soil biological activity, and Dr. Gustaf Forsberg, Senior Specialist of Swedish company “ThermoSeed Global” that offers innovative, highly efficient and environmentally friendly seed treatment technology. Meanwhile, Dr. Inga Matijošytė, Senior Researcher and Head of Applied Biocatalysis Sector at the Institute of Biotechnology of Vilnius University Life Sciences Centre, and Dr. Irena Vitkauskienė, Business Development Consultant at Lithuanian company “Plastiksė” that manufactures plastic packaging products for beverage, food, cosmetic, chemical and medical industries, will share their insights about the future of plastics.

As the transition towards more circular and bio-based economy requires new business models that change the way the enterprises conduct their business, the second part of the panel discussion will be dedicated to the discussion on good practice business models for sustainable bioeconomy development. Dr. Ants-Hannes Viira, Senior Researcher and Director of the Institute of Economics and Social Sciences at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, will present results of the recent study on such business models conducted by the BalticBiomass4Value project.

More information: https://sbd.vdu.lt

Registration: https://sbd.vdu.lt/for-participants/registrations/

Food Hack by Biobord – international on-line food innovation development workshop and competition – took place 11.03. – 12.03.2021, for two days gathering 6 experts and 13 companies from Sweden, Latvia, Finland, and Estonia to address several specific challenges and develop new products in the field of alternative proteins and functional foods by working in international teams.

Inspiring presentations from experienced experts

The event was filled with inspirational presentations from multiple experts. “Is food only food when you eat it?” by the eating designer Marije Vogelzang (NL) gave several innovative examples of how food can be seen from multiple, more irrational angles, making the experience of food consumption different for each one of us by changing the narrative of different products. Reetta Kivelä, Professor of Practice in University of Helsinki (FI), raised the question “Are we living in a protein boom?”. “Green, blue and red. Exploring alternative proteins and novel foods” was presented by Viktoria Olsson, Senior lecturer, Food & Meal Science at Kristianstad University (SE). Eila Järvenpää, Senior Scientist in Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) gave an insight on diversifying protein sources and their benefits on each of us and our planet. Mari Jaakkola, Project Manager at University of Oulu, Kajaani University Consortium, Unit of Measurement Technology (MITY) (FI), introduced several alternative ways of Lingonberry utilization, as well as fermentation, protein research and special sample treatment techniques. “Global market trends in organic functional proteins and ingredients” was presented by Erkki Pöytäniemi, CEO of Kurmakka Organic Food Ltd. (FI)

The hacking process and results

The teams had a rather difficult task – to solve the challenges and come up with new ideas in the field of alternative proteins and functional foods. Each group were given a possibility to receive a 30-minute consultation from the external experts/coaches, to better understand the right direction towards a solution which was then evaluated by a team of jury.

The challenge “Finding new and different strategies for marketing healthy and nutritious food” was solved by representatives from Aloja-Starkelsen (LV), the largest producer of potato starch in the Baltic states, as well as one of the largest producers of organic potato starch on a global scale; Felici (LV), developers of functional muesli, hot cereal and quick meal of high nutritional value, Ferla (EE), producer of fermented vegetable drink, The Kefir guy (FI), kefir producer and MTÜ Roheliselt Värske Elu (EE), promoters of organic production from small local farmers. The solution provided was based on the step-by-step changes by addressing the society on the benefits gained by plant-based diet.

To solve the challenge “Changing the perception of plant-based protein”, the second team, Suomen Hampputuotteet Oy (FI), investors in pure Finnish raw materials, Lipasu Oy/Härtelö (FI), producers of a new, sustainable base ingredient combined with beloved traditions, Aloja-Starkelsen and Felici, suggested showing the society how to easily cook tasty warm meals that replace animal-based meals and developing superior plant-based snacks by using urban advertising. “Changing the perception of plant-based proteins as an alternative to meat products is achieved through complex activities – the real product to offer, like Hemp-burger, brown pea chunks and fava bean ice cream as well as public education activities.”

The third team represented by GreenBite (EE), the first company in Estonia producing food from insects, BugBox (EE), producers of high-quality ecological and sustainable protein powder in large quantities as alternative to existing animal protein, and Tebrito (SE), sustainable and innovative insect product producers, worked on the challenge “Transforming the attitude towards new products including protein from insects and food”. The innovation of this group consisted of making a fun educational program “WISH to taste a bug?!” which would create interest to taking the first bite resulting in the insects as a regular and normal food.

The challenge “Exploration of new protein resources” gathered companies Lupinta (SE), producers of lupin-based products, MILZU! (LV), producer of a healthy cereal, which turns rye into a special meal, Fagraslätt (SE), organic food producers, Aloja-Starkelsen and Felici. The main factors in making their innovation were the challenges of increasing food waste, and fast-moving lifestyle which motivated the team in making an actual product prototype – plant based vegan pancake DIY, mix, consisting of beer leftovers, brown pea and fava bean protein called “Morning Heaven Magic Mix”. The benefits of this product would be convenient use and production, richness of organic plant-based protein and use of beer processing side-stream ingredients which decreases food waste and develops a more sustainable environment. The first actual product prototype was already developed during the hackathon.

When evaluating each team’s work, several jury criteria regarding the solution vs challenge, process, market potential, level of innovation and sustainability were taken into consideration. “We selected the winner based on the excellent and practical team-work and the process of utilizing all of the groups’ knowledge and local side-streams,” said the jury member when announcing the winner – group number four – developers of Morning Heaven Magic Mix product concept!

What happens next?

The follow-up workshop of the hackathon will take place on the 28th of April 2021 when Lupinta, MILZU!, Fagraslätt, Aloja-Starkelsen and Felici will have a chance to meet more experts and receive consultations to take their product innovation even further. Not only that, but the open part of the workshop will also include new key notes and great international networking possibilities. Follow us in Facebook for further updates: @BiobordPlatform

Registration is now open for a virtual conference on the topic of Emerging Biorefinery Technologies & Pathways to Deployment, being organised in partnership with the European Commission on 17 February 2021. The conference is jointly hosted by Horizon 2020 projects Bio4Products and Rehap, and forms part of the EU Industry Week. The event is free of charge but registration is required via this link.

Event description

For Europe to move towards a competitive bioeconomy, is it is essential that biorefinery technologies developed in the lab and at pilot scale are upscaled and deployed at an industrial scale. Industry and policy makers must work together to create commercial pathways to this greener future – but how?

This interactive event brings together researchers, industry leaders and policy makers to discuss how the European bioeconomy can take green technology from idea to deployment and who needs to do what to make this happen.

Agenda

Some of Europe’s leading researchers and innovative bio-based companies, as well as EU policy makers and associations will present at the conference, including: Bio-Based Europe Pilot Plant, BTG Biomass Technology Group, Capax Biobased Development, Collanti, EuropaBio, European Commission, RAMPF, Tecnalia and more. The full agenda will be published in the next days.

• 13:00 Introductions and keynote from the EU
• 13:30 Technical sessions: Feedstock, processes and new products, Interactive session with audience Q&A
• 15:00 Coffee break
• 15:30 First panel session: From idea to deployment – an industry view
• 16:15 Second panel session: Rollout of biorefinery technologies – policy perspective
• 17:00 Close

The projects

The event is organised by two EU-funded SPIRE projects, Bio4Products and Rehap, both successful in identifying biomass availability and developing innovative new conversion processes and bio-based products. The projects have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements number 723070 and 723670 respectively.

Registration

The event is free of charge but registration is mandatory via this link.

Food Hack by Biobord
11.03. – 12.03.2021

Alternative proteins and functional foods

Does innovation, sustainability and food make your heart leap?
Are you passionate about the more sustainable future of food? Then join us!

Food Hack by Biobord is a digital 24-hour long innovation competition hosted by the Interreg Baltic Sea Region project ConnectedbyBiobord, with a transnational team of experts and hackers. The ConnectedbyBiobord -project is working for building competitive transnational collaboration in unlocking new market opportunities within the bioeconomy field in the Baltic Sea Region. The theme of the competition is ”Alternative proteins and functional foods” and we have collected five challenges that are common for companies in the Baltic Sea region.

Functional foods: foods containing probiotics, prebiotics, or plant stanols and sterols. Functional foods, drinks, and ingredients that deliver additional or enhanced benefits over and above their basic nutritional value. They can also be fortified food products with a nutrient that would not usually be present to any great extent, like specific vitamins.

Alternative proteins: Alternative protein sources encompass variety of meat substitutes, including algae, mycoprotein, plant-based legumes and insects.

Food Hack by Biobord is an event where open innovation and the idea of everyone growing whilst sharing knowledge is core (if you do not want to share something – do not tell!). This means that everyone can claim the ideas or solutions that come up during the event and that everything you share with others will help to fulfill this purpose.

Would you like to be a hacker?

As a hacker you will work in teams with challenges, boosted by the latest research and experienced mentors. All in the spirit of open challenge driven innovation! You will be part of a team based on what challenge you are most interested in. The challenges are presented below. As a hacker you are part of the full program including inspiration sessions, meetings with experts in the field and taking part in the innovation competition. The program will be from Thursday, March 11^th morning until Friday, March 12^th afternoon. More detailed schedule will be sent to registered hackers at the end of February, together with additional information. Winning team of the Food Hack by Biobord will move on to a second innovation round and is able to develop their challenge-driven innovation even further with new experts and support. All participants leave the event with new transnational contacts and new knowledge, and who knows – with new innovations!

Make sure to register each participating member of your organization to this free event before 21.02.2021:
https://link.webropolsurveys.com/S/999A853B6B846E35

Challenges

To succeed in our work of developing new products for alternative proteins or functional food and bring them all the way from first idea to finished product on the market, often with limited resources, we need to collaborate and network.

We must create a sustainable way of working long-term and sharing experiences and knowledge with each other. Working this way, we can speed up processes, learn from mistakes, create a consumer demand together and cut lead times. The objective is to bring our new high-quality products to the market more successfully and faster.

Exchange of technical expertise and creative ideas for marketing communication is a success factor for the future. All proposed challenges below are starting points for discussions regarding how to collaborate on common issues, obstacles, and possibilities, and how to benefit from each other’s knowledge and experience.

Please select top 3 challenges of your choice from the preference point of view (mark with 1 your preference no 1 and so on). Selection is done in the registration link.

1.      How to share and exchange expertise knowledge

Components of herbal plants and fungi are used as ingredients in the production of various fermented products. Companies are developing new malt-based fermented drinks, supplemented with plant and fungi based bioactive compounds to achieve various qualities for nutrition, energy boosting and health benefits. Bioactive compounds are extracted from plants and fungi, and the challenge is to maintain the nutritional value of these compounds and at the same time obtain products with taste quality that can be accepted by and appeal to consumers. This requires technical expertise – a knowledge that several companies could share.

Challenge: How can different stakeholders working on similar challenges share their knowledge and expertise in a creative and constructive way? What do the channels of information look like today and how can we improve them?  In what way can we gain access to process and technology know-how? Today and in the future?

2.      Finding new and different strategies for marketing healthy and nutritious food

In order to grow production volumes to make niche products more attractive and affordable, companies dealing with food innovation in the fields of plant-based proteins, functional ingredients, and novel food sources, often face significant challenges. These range from understanding what exactly customers are looking for in plant-based products and functional food, the impact of ingredients and production processes on product microstructure and texture, proving the claimed benefits of healthiness and nutrition, and increasing the willingness of consumers to invest into sustainable future by starting to use alternative protein sources.

Today, marketing is all about finding your niche and building the platform where your voice will make a difference and can be heard. As it can be difficult for any SME, micro or start up business to enter and be a profitable player in any market, main or niche, companies need to be innovative to find, develop and be successful in their market of choice.

Challenge: What kind of marketing strategies, for example nudging, can be used to increase consumption of healthier and more nutritious innovative food products that are beneficial, attractive, and affordable, thus more sustainable for the planet, businesses and the individual? What technical solutions could benefit healthy food choices?

3.      Changing the perception of plant-based protein

Developing new plant-based products can be quite difficult for small businesses, as a lot of research and testing needs to be done to find mutually supportive ingredients in terms of taste, texture, nutrients, and appearance. Product development of plant-based/alternative proteins often aim to produce foods that are “instead of meat” or “equal to meat”. Neither product development nor the marketing of these products has been particularly successful.

Plant based and alternative protein products could instead be a separate food group with their own interesting functions. Products can often be heavily processed and contain many food additives to make them more familiar or meat-like to consumers. It is in the interest of food producers, and even a market demand, to develop less processed foods and use local ingredients instead of X (X = coconut oil, sugar, glucose syrup and invert sugar solution or similar).

Innovation has focused on appealing to the presumed demands of meat eaters– but switching from eating meat to consuming other proteins is a harder step to take if these products are perceived as artificial and intensely processed.

Challenge: What strategies can be built to change our perception of plant-based proteins as a direct alternative to a particular dish (sausage, hamburger) and instead of modifying the structure of the product to see it as a stand-alone protein source? What would we call these products and how would they be marketed?

4.      Transforming the attitude towards protein from insects and insects in food. (Insects as an example of a protein source that has long journey to market.)

For several years, insects have been considered to be part of our sustainable diet in the future, and a strong contender among alternative protein sources. Countries have different regulations and laws regarding insects as human food, and this has led to differences in development of this protein source in the Baltic Sea region. In some countries the only way to sell insects for human consumption is to offer them as whole intact specimens, since their fragmentation into pure protein is not allowed. Despite companies’ extensive efforts to extract human food from insects, they have jointly faced tough challenges due to the abovementioned and cultural constraints and resistance, which has resulted in failure to reach a commercial market.

Various cooking methods and recipes have been explored to make novel food accepted by the public. Instead of focusing on processing and texture, it is time to explore how context and culture can have an impact on how we perceive insects as food.

Challenge: What would happen if we placed the insect food product in a different context (environment, tradition, or culture)? How do we design the “insect food experience” to attract new markets? What marketing strategies can be explored to design the insect food experience? In which context, tradition or culture could the insects fit in?

5.      Exploration of new protein resources

Protein rich legumes, for example beans and peas, and their side streams are used in the development of new protein rich products. Today companies produce or process these legumes, but as is the case with beans and peas, they are mainly used for protein extrusion or production of other end products like salted bean snacks.

Three main needs can be identified:

• Identification of new raw materials which could be used themselves as ingredients, either pure or in combination with other products.
• Exploration of new products where side streams would be used. A challenge can be the special taste of legume side streams, which makes it difficult to use as replacement of cereal products, for example.
• Solutions need to be economically justifiable for small and medium-sized production systems to create dynamic, agile, and thus radical innovation.

Challenge: What could be the new alternative protein sources? Where can we obtain knowledge about such raw materials and how should this information be made available?

Practical information

Food Hack by Biobord teams will be formed as transnational teams, based on the participants’ challenge preferences. Composition of the teams will be announced at the start of the virtual hackathon event and teams will have 24h to hack the challenge of their choice, supported by experts in relevant fields. Experts will be selected according to the challenges, so the best possible help is at your disposal. Experts will be presented to the teams in the information package that is sent to all participants by the end of February/beginning of March. Teams will also have technical support and general guidance available during the day, from 08:00 – 17:00. An online meeting platform and co-working tools are also provided for the teams by the project coordinators, so hacking is possible even after office hours. All details will be specified in the information package.

For now, we are kindly asking you to:

1. Select top 3 challenges you are most interested in
2. Register (all participants from your organizations) and announce your 3 choices
3. Save the date 11.03. – 12.03.2021 (from 09:00 – 16:00 (EET))
4. Stay tuned for more details

In case of questions, do not hesitate to contact us:

Riikka Kumpulainen, project manager of ConnectedByBiobord

riikka.kumpulainen@jamk.fi/ +358 505759454

Elin Hansson, event coordinator and project partner
elin.h@krinova.se / +46 738082061

Supporting the access of CEE stakeholders to cross-border and trans-national networks – Nitra, Slovakia

Please note that this event will be organised as an online meeting.

Within POWER4BIO, the further development of existing networks is supported with the inclusion of missing relevant organisations rather than the creation of new ones. In several events, POWER4BIO is giving regional stakeholders the opportunity to meet a network, exchange experiences, and learn more about the benefits of networking. This event focuses on the support of CEE stakeholders to cross-border and trans-national networks in the Nitra region in Slovakia.

Please note that the organisation of this event is still ongoing. For more information, please visit the POWER4BIO event calendar.