Category: New value chains and business models

Engage4BIO project

Engage4BIO project

This project ends on: 30/09/2025

Better understanding, intensified engagement, training and development in regional bio-based systems

Engage4BIO will strengthen circular, sustainable bioeconomy and sustainable regional development through engaging quadruple helix actors – taking into account their diversity of societal, economic and cultural perspectives from five regional bio-based systems in processes of design thinking, co-creation, (re)training and skills development. Based on their regional specificities (availability of biomass feedstock, level of technology, planetary boundaries and social capital) activities will be co-created, performed and shaped to their best advantage for each region.

Contacts:

Dr. Maria Schrammel: schrammel@zsi.at

website: www.engage4bio.eu

BIOLOC project

BIOLOC project

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

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/

SCALE-UP project

SCALE-UP project

This project ends on: 30/08/2025

Concepts, tools and applications for community-driven bioeconomy development in European rural areas

The overall goal of SCALE-UP is to support regional multi-actor partnerships, consisting of private businesses, governments and policymakers, civil society organisations, and researchers in identifying and scaling-up innovative and sustainable bio-based value chains that build on regional resources.

Through its approach, SCALE-UP will adapt, implement and evaluate tools to help regional actors to overcome the apparent bottlenecks towards fully exploiting bioeconomy potentials in their region.

A four-phase methodology will:

i) establish existing knowledge and set the stage for further research, as well as create six regional platforms with local stakeholders;

ii) facilitate cross-regional transfer of knowledge and demand-driven capacity building, and provide support to multi-actor partnerships to carry out market assessments and business model designs;

iii) create a pan-European ‘Community of Practice’ to facilitate sharing good practices and lessons learned across European regions; and

iv) disseminate and exploit project results in collaboration with key stakeholders.

In addition to the focus on increasing capacity and knowledge on the bioeconomy among relevant actors in the regions, a key feature of SCALE-UP is the business development programme to be applied by the local communities.

With an emphasis on the principles of co-creation, transparency and open innovation, the project will provide advisory support to innovators and regional stakeholders to assess market conditions, elaborate business plans and identify compatible funding sources for 12 bio-based solutions.

Contacts:

Holger Gerdes: holger.gerdes@ecologic.eu
Zoritza Kiresiewa: zoritza.kiresiewa@ecologic.eu

website: http://scaleup-bioeconomy.eu/

BlueRev project

BlueRev project

This project ends on: 31/08/2025

Revitalisation of European local communities with innovative businessmodels and social innovation in the blue bio-based sector

The aim of the EU-funded BlueRev project is to encourage innovation in local communities by focusing on “blue” sustainability and creating positive environmental impacts.

To that end, it will establish three pilot regions in Europe, where it will focus on introducing meaningful changes across specific value chains in the blue bio-based sector.

The project will employ existing or advanced monitoring systems to assess the effectiveness of the value chains and come up with ways to improve governance frameworks and business models in the blue bio-based sector.

Engaging all relevant actors via awareness-raising communication campaigns, BlueRev will promote socially and environmentally responsible behaviour, facilitating the transition of local communities towards sustainable blue economy models that can be adopted across Europe.

Contacts:

Alessio Livio Spera: spera@apre.it
Claudia Iasillo: iasillo@apre.it

website: https://www.bluerevproject.eu/

HARMONITOR project

HARMONITOR project

This project ends on: 31/05/2025

Harmonisation and monitoring platform for certification schemes and labels to advance the sustainability ofbio-based systems

The HARMONITOR project will improve the effectiveness of sustainability certification schemes and labels (CSLs) in various sectors of the EU bioeconomy and strengthen their possible use as a co-regulation instrument within the EU Bioeconomy policy framework. The project will also establish and test a participative review platform concept to help CSLs to find commonalities and cooperation when operating in bio-based value chains within and across EU borders. The goal of this platform is to promote continuous improvement of CSLs and continuous knowledge of these dynamic developments by market actors.

Contacts:

Sergio Ugarte: s.ugarte@sqconsult.com
Costanza Rossi: c.rossi@sqconsult.com
Monique Voogt: M.Voogt@sqconsult.com

website: https://www.harmonitor.eu

ShapingBio project

ShapingBio project

This project ends on: 31/08/2025

Shaping the future bioeconomy across sectoral, governmental and geographical levels

Funded under Horizon Europe, ShapingBio will strengthen and deploy innovation in bio-based sectors, including food systems, across Europe – by ensuring an inclusive and sustainable growth at local level. ShapingBio provides recommendations for measures and good practice how to strengthen this innovation ecosystem, how to overcome hurdles and how to improve its efficiency, its sustainability and resilience. The project therefore will also contribute significantly to a number of EU level initiatives and strategies, such as the bioeconomy strategy and Action Plan, the Farm to Fork strategy, the EU Green Deal policy priorities and the EU’s Climate ambition for 2030 and 2050.

Contacts:

Dr. Sven Wydra: Sven.wydra@isi.fraunhofer.de

website: https://www.shapingbio.eu

BioReCer project

BioReCer project

This project ends on: 31/08/2025

Biological Resources Certifications Schemes

BIORECER aims at assessing and complementing current certification and labelling schemes for biological feedstock according to the new sustainability EU goals. These objectives include new criteria for sustainability, origin, tracking and traceability, in order to ensure best possible environmental performance and applicability at EU and global scale.

Contacts:

Pedro Villanueva Rey: Pedro.villanueva@cetaqua.com

website: https://biorecer.eu/

Bio4Africa project

Bio4Africa project

This project ends on: 30/05/2025

Diversifying revenue in rural Africa through circular, sustainable and replicable bio-based solutions and business models

Africa will need to feed over 2 billion people by 2050 while coping with unprecedented demographic, socio-economic, environmental, climatic and health transitions. Meanwhile, undernourishment is still on the rise, affecting almost 20% of its population now. Under this light, ensuring Africa’s food security becomes imperative, with the bioeconomy posed to play a leading role to this end. It is against this backdrop that BIO4AFRICA sets off to support the deployment of the bioeconomy in rural Africa via the development of bio-based solutions and value chains with a circular approach to drive the cascading use of local resources and diversify the income of farmers. Our focus is on transferring simple, small-scale and robust bio-based technologies adapted to local biomass, needs and contexts (green biorefinery, pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonisation, briquetting, pelletising, bio-composites and bioplastics production). In doing so we aim at empowering farmers to sustainably produce a variety of higher value bio-based products and energy (animal feed, fertiliser, pollutant absorbents, construction materials, packaging, solid fuel for cooking and catalysts for biogas production), significantly improving the environmental, economic and social performance of their forage agri-food systems. To this end, we have set up 4 pilot cases with over 8 testing sites in Uganda, Ghana, Senegal and Ivory Coast, offering more than 300 farmers and farmer groups of all sizes (incl. small dairy and lower-income farmers, women farmer groups and transhumant pastoralists among others) the opportunity to test them in real productive conditions. Along the way, our balanced mix of 13 African and 12 EU partners will engage in solid multi-actor collaboration with rural communities and government, co-developing novel sustainable value chains driven by circular business models and supporting deployment in other areas, all while safeguarding agronomic, environmental, social and economic sustainability.

Contacts:

Knud Tybirk: kt@foodbiocluster.dk

website: https://www.bio4africa.eu/

BioRural project

BioRural project

This project ends on: 31/08/2025

Accelerating circular bio-based solutions integration in European rural areas

BioRural’s goal is to create a European Rural Bioeconomy Network to promote small-scale bio-based solutions in rural areas and support the transition towards a sustainable, regenerative, inclusive and just circular Bioeconomy across all Europe at local and regional scale. BioRural will achieve this through a three-pillar intervention scheme that feeds into a publicly available BioRural Toolkit that creates a wide network of collaborative stakeholders on a regional and European level; assesses the existing European rural Bioeconomy and captures grassroots-level needs and ideas for the adoption of biobased solutions; includes a range of small scale bio-based success stories; promotes effective exchange of knowledge and information through a series of workshops; holds a bioeconomy challenge for new practical bio-based solutions; and develops rural Business model blueprints for Bioeconomy businesses from conception to scale.

Contacts:

Thanos Balafoutis: a.balafoutis@certh.gr

Bas Paris: b.paris@certh.gr

Despoina Kampouridou: despoina@foodscalehub.com

website: www.biorural.eu