Category: Biomass availability, quality, supply and sustainability

Brilian project

Brilian project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
This project ends on: 31/05/2027

Cooperative business models for bio-based chains in rural areas

BRILIAN has been conceived to support the adoption of circular and sustainable cooperative business models in rural areas and enable a better transition to bio-based economies, playing a pivotal role in revitalizing these regions and fostering sustainable economic and social development, making primary producers active actors of the supply chain.

BRILIAN will implement a multi-actor approach for the validation of a group of Actions for the Bio Innovation, seeking to:

  1. Forge robust rural bio-communities
  2. Increase circularity and sustainability
  3. Promote the integration of short supply chains
  4. Produce value-added bioproducts

These Actions for the Bio Innovation will validate ten bio-based value chains starting from cardoon, safflower, and sunflower (in Italy), potato (in Spain), and rapeseed (in Denmark) as raw materials and will develop sustainable and circular business models encompassing a wide range of high-value-added bio-products, such as bioplastics, biolubricants, proteins, bioadhesives, bioherbicides, products for animal feed or the cosmetic sector. This will allow primary producers to diversify their income while reducing risk.

BRILIAN is an ambitious four-year project with a budget exceeding 6 million euros, co-financed by the Circular Bio-Based Europe (CBE) joint initiative under the European program for innovation and research ‘Horizon Europe 2021-2027’ (HE). The project involves 13 entities from 6 different countries: Spain, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Greece, including 3 large companies, 3 SMEs, 3 research organizations, 2 clusters, and 2 associations.

Contacts:

Olga de Blas (D&C Area): Odeblas@clusterfoodmasi.es
Maider Gómez (Project coordinador): mgomez@fcirce.es

website: https://brilian.eu/

PRIMED project

PRIMED project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
This project ends on: 31/12/2026

Redesigning the Primary Sector for Maximizing Bioeconomy Development

The PRIMED Project PRIMED will co-create innovative forms of cooperation to integrate primary producers in novel bioeconomy value chains with a multi-actor approach. To do so, PRIMED will develop novel CBMB to produce high-value bio-based products through advanced biorefineries and will demonstrate them in five Living Labs (LLab) where end users can access to finance through open calls. PRIMED will also empower multi-actors to co-design a collaborative ecosystem to accelerate the bioeconomy, with an Open Access knowledge hub and toolkit (PRIMED digital toolbox).

Peuker Steinhäuser Vivian: vivian.peukersteinhaeuser@ruhr-uni-bochum.de

website: https://www.primed-project.eu

BIO2REG project

BIO2REG project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
This project ends on: 31/12/2026

Enabling transition towards circular and systemic BIOeconomy model regions by a Regions-to-Regions approach

A sustainable bioeconomy is essential for achieving the goals of the Green Deal. However, implementing a regional bioeconomy comes with various challenges. Bioeconomy model regions offer a systemic approach to transitioning to sustainable development. The EU-funded BIO2REG project aims to help greenhouse gas-intensive economies unlock their bioeconomy potential by moving towards model regions. The project will encourage interregional exchange and cooperation, providing regional stakeholders with a conceptual framework for regionalisation in model regions. This involves mapping best practices in a circular and sustainable bioeconomy, assessing bioeconomy potential, offering mentoring and training, forming transition alliances, and making policy recommendations. The project adopts a multi-actor approach by collaboratively creating tools and guides with regional stakeholders and engaging with regions through guided on-site exchanges.

Denise Gider: d.gider@fz-juelich.de

website: https://bio2reg.eu/

INNOPROTEIN project

INNOPROTEIN project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
This project ends on: 31/05/2027

New Sustainable Proteins For Food, Feed And Non-Food Bio-Based Applications

By 2050, with the global population expected to reach 10 billion, producing sustainable, high-quality protein becomes a pressing environmental, economic, and social challenge. The EU’s “protein gap”, importing 70 % of protein-rich crops and 90 % of soybeans, adds urgency to the quest for new, nutritious, and eco-friendly protein sources that cater to diverse markets.
InnoProtein will deliver new products for food, feed and non-food based applications that meet end-users’ needs and expectations. By using under-exploited and unexplored protein sources, including microalgae, fungi, bacteria and insects together with new advanced techniques for protein extraction, the project will contribute to reducing the EU protein gap and the pressure on natural resources.
The experienced consortium will provide an eco-business model, proving the economic availability of the solution and the social and environmental benefits. To improve the efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of the protein extraction, InnoProtein will adopt a circular and zero waste approach by using the residual biomass and the streams of protein production processes to obtain bioplastics and biostimulants.

Giacomo Sini: giacomo.sini@eufic.org

website: https://www.innoprotein.eu/

RuralBioUp project

RuralBioUp project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
This project ends on: 30/09/2025

Empowering EU Rural Regions to scale-Up and adopt small-scale Bio-based solutions: the transition towards a sustainable, regenerative, inclusive and just circular bioeconomy

Climate change will require concerted innovative ideas and actions at the local/regional level. A sustainable European bioeconomy will not only ensure the protection of the environment and biodiversity, but will also drive the renewal of European industries, the modernisation of primary production systems and lead to the creation of jobs, particularly in rural areas, through the active participation of all regional stakeholders in their local bioeconomies. RuralBioUp project will strengthen the cooperation among regional key actors and knowledge holders, empowering them to establish an inclusive and long-lasting ecosystem (the RuralBioUp Regional Hubs) to support the mainstreaming of bio-based business models in rural areas. In particular, RuralBioUp will establish 9 Regional Hubs (30 stakeholders per Hub) in 6 EU countries, that will co-design and implement 9 Action Plans on 18 value chains. Regional Hubs will be empowered by RuralBioUp’s partners with mentoring, coaching and training activities in the implementation of their Action Plans. Thanks to this, at least (a.l.) 1.000 innovators will be supported (through networking events and study visits) and a.l. 50 new collaborations fostered (e.g. partnership agreements between companies and/or farmers, solutions funded, etc.) to adopt small-scale bio-based solutions in rural areas. The project will leverage synergies between existing EU networks (EuBioNet, BioEast, etc.), clusters, and regional organisations and will build upon previous research results (Power4Bio, BE-RURAL, Enabling, Transition2Bio, Biovoices, etc.) by integrating and extending the existing knowledge and data in order to propose different rural business models and new bio-based value chains in the targeted regions, through the realisation of a digital tool (the RuralBioUp One-Stop-Shop) supporting regional actors to take sciencebased and informed decisions.

9 Regional Hubs :

  • Centru Region Romania
  • Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Regional Hub France
  • Latvia Regional Hub Latvia
  • Ireland Regional Hub Ireland
  • Pays de la Loire France
  • Charles Spa Czechia
  • Marche Italy
  • Puglia ItalyContacts:

Karolina Jurkiewicz: info@ruralbioup.eu

website: https://www.ruralbioup.eu/

BioBoosters project

BioBoosters project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
This project ends on: 31/12/2025

Boosting the Circular Transition

BioBoosters aims to advance the green transition of bioeconomy business by matchmaking competence with needs. By employing a proven business-driven Hackathon process, we can solve challenges that the bioeconomy businesses are facing in transitioning to circular economy business models.

BioBoosters Hackathon is connecting the bioeconomy innovation ecosystems of 9 regions across the Baltic Sea Region. By implementing the open innovation process in inter-regional co-operation, we can facilitate cross-sectoral knowledge transfer as well as connect SMEs, start-ups, and research groups with companies in an international context.

We will run 18 BioBoosters Hackathons together with target groups to validate the innovation process model to be adopted in the key bioeconomy innovation hubs of the participating regions. Furthermore, the model will be transferrable to any innovation hub that is looking to support their regional business networks in green or digital transition.
Our expected impact in numbers:

  • 18 Business-driven Hackathons will validate up to 70 solutions to circular transition challenges
  • 20 international RDI and business co-operations initiated
  • 500 specialist brought together to drive the circular transition of the bioeconomy in the Baltic Sea Region

Contacts:

Anna Aalto: anna.aalto@jamk.fi

website: https://interreg-baltic.eu/project/bioboosters/

CHEERS project

CHEERS project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
This project ends on: 31/08/2026

Producing novel non-plant biomass feedstocks and bio-based products through upcycling and the cascading use of brewery side-streams

Biotechnology has the potential to reduce the impact of human activities in nature. By developing new bio-based production platforms towards a more efficient use of waste streams, a step forward in industrial circularity can be achieved.

CHEERS is a new biorefinery concept, inspired on nature biodiversity (insect and microbial platforms), to sustainably and efficiently upgrade underused or waste side-streams such as bagasse, wastewater, CO2 and CH4 from bio-based industries into innovative bio-based products. CHEERS will help bio-based industries to improve their feedstock use efficiency and overall sustainability and competitiveness via upcycling and cascading use of biomass produced from their side-streams. CHEERS is developed as a modular solution where bio-based industries can configure their optimal combination by selecting among 5 novel biotechnological routes which generate 5 bio-based products for industrial applications, with attractive market opportunities: insect protein, disinfectant, microbial protein, ectoine and caproic acid. All value chains are based on new bioprocesses and/or innovative biofermentors combined with sustainable downstream processes, which will be validated at demo-scale at an industrial brewery. A min. 45% carbon footprint reduction will be achieved in each value chain. The evaluation of CHEERS impacts will consider go beyond the classic LCA and will cover broader impacts such as biodiversity and land use. The beer company MAHOU is project coordinator and exploitation leader jointly with 11 partners of 5 European countries, including technology suppliers, end-users and research entities. CHEERS will contribute to a “zero waste” biorefinery approach, fully aligned with the EU Green Deal, Circular Economy Action Plan and Bioeconomy Strategy, and foster the understanding of biotechnology-based value chains through the engagement of relevant actors, from small bio-based industries to consumers.

Contacts:

Andrea León Tarife: andrea.leon@innovarum.es

website: https://cheers-project.eu/

Model2Bio project

Model2Bio project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
This project ends on: 19/12/2024

MODELLING TOOL FOR GIVING VALUE TO AGRI-FOOD RESIDUAL STREAMS IN BIO-BASED INDUSTRIES

Every year, 41 million tonnes of food are wasted in the European Union during processing. This affects the economy, the environment and our communities. Transport, treatment at waste sites and landfilling drive up management and operational costs, while rotting food at landfills emits greenhouse gases.

What is considered waste and discarded, often still contains industrially valuable compounds. Model2Bio will develop a predictive model to help agri-food companies identify, select and reuse organic waste streams. To identify the most economic and environmentally friendly solutions for waste streams, the model will consider stream composition, volume, transformation as well as logistics, business cases and social aspects. The project started in May 2020 and will run until October 2023.

Behind this EU-funded project are think-tanks, research centres, technology developers, universities, industry (mainly small and medium-sized businesses) and clusters from across Europe.

Contacts:

Tamara Fernández, Coordinator: tfernandez@ceit.es

website: https://www.model2bio.eu/

BIOLOC project

BIOLOC project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
This project ends on: 30/09/2025

Biobased and social innovation to revitalise European local communities

BIOLOC project is funded by European Commission, and it promotes social innovation and inclusion as enabling factors to accelerate the transition to circular bioeconomy and thus contributes to revitalizing local communities in 12 European regions in Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. Through extensive interdisciplinary research and cross-sectoral analyses, BIOLOC will elaborate on concepts and solutions that will trigger positive cascading effects on communities by fostering a participatory and inclusive approach to develop resilient innovative biobased activities open to the contribution of socially disadvantaged or marginalised groups. In this way it will deliver innovative and inclusive business models and drive the establishment of permanent public-private multistakeholder hubs to pioneer a social trialogue on innovative and inclusive circular bioeconomy as a leveraging factor for sustainable and resilient local communities.

Contacts:

Mr. Peter Canciani, Project Manager: canciani@cei.int

website: https://bioloc.eu/

BIOTRANSFORM project

BIOTRANSFORM project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
This project ends on: 31/03/2025

Circular BIOeconomy TRANSFORMation for regions by enabling resource and governance networks

BIOTRANSFORM provides European policymakers with an adequate assessment and policy development framework, knowledge base and expert support ecosystem to accelerate the transition from linear fossil-based systems to circular biobased systems. It is therefore operating at the interface between the circular economy and the bioeconomy transitions. In this way, BIOTRANSFORM equips policymakers with the tools to set informed priorities that serve environmental, economic, and social goals, being actionable, future-proof, and align with supply-and-demand trends in related industries and value chains. BIOTRANSFORM’s “assessment package” will be tested by and provided for European policymakers, which will include 3 complementary tools: (i) resource flow analysis tool including circular innovations, (ii) a cutting edge quick environmental, social and economic assessment tool, and (iii) a logistics management tool. To achieve this, BIOTRANSFORM develops and tests its framework to establish and roll out circular bio-based systems by applying a multi-actor approach around 6 regional cases: Andalusia (Spain), Northern Burgenland (Austria), Western Macedonia (Greece), Finland, Charles Spa Region (Czech Republic) and North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). These regional case studies represent several important industries and scenarios for Europe such as: forestry, agri-food, lake ecosystems, lignite and minerals, and chemicals. Action roadmaps will consider specific regional available resources and infrastructures, conversion pathways, logistics, current policies, strategies, and access to finance. In other words, BIOTRANSFORM builds on the concept of regenerative bioeconomy value cycles by tapping into what is there already and connecting the dots. In this concept, carbon is stored and nutrients are recovered. This concept shall be upscaled and replicated to many further European regions to achieve Europe’s ambitious goals.

Contacts:

Jussi Lahtinen: jussi.h.lahtinen@vtt.fi

website: https://www.biotransform-project.eu/