Category: New value chains and business models

 SMARTCHAIN project

 SMARTCHAIN project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Objective

SMARTCHAIN is an ambitious, 3 year project with 43 partners from 11 European countries including key stakeholders from the domain of short food supply chain as actors in the project. The central objective is to foster and accelerate the shift towards collaborative short food supply chains and, through concrete actions and recommendations, to introduce new robust business models and innovative practical solutions that enhance the competitiveness and sustainability of the European agri-food system.
Using bottom-up, demand-driven research, the SMARTCHAIN consortium i) will perform a multi-perspective analysis of 18 case studies of short food supply chains in terms of technological, regulatory, social, economic and environmental factors, ii) will assess the linkages and interactions among all stakeholders involved in short food supply chains and iii) will identify the key parameters that influence sustainable food production and rural development among different regions in Europe.
The project aims to establish 9 national communities of short food supply chains (Innovation and Collaboration Hubs) in different partner countries (France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland) and a virtual innovation hub in order to facilitate stakeholder engagement, bringing farmers and consumers together in a trust-enhancing environment enabling them to generate demand driven-innovations.
Combination of scientific and practical knowledge and the use of innovation workshops will enable the development of practical innovative solutions as well as the promotion of a framework for different forms of collaborative short food supply chains in urban and rural areas. SMARTCHAIN will generate concrete actions for knowledge transfer, through the organisation of multi-stakeholder workshops and training activities for farmers and short food supply chain entrepreneurs.

Contacts:  Susanne Braun: susanne.braun@uni-hohenheim.de

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 SuperBIO project

 SuperBIO project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

SUPERBIO focuses on the biobased economy. This emerging economy relies on the use of biomass (e.g. plants, waste) as renewable raw material for the production of new or existing products.

The technologies used are a combination of biochemistry, biotechnology, chemistry and processing technology. The cluster coordinating SUPERBIO (GBEV) has already more than 3 years’ experience in building new biobased economy value chains at regional level and is active in European projects aimed at supporting SMEs to bring innovations to the market.

The consortium consists of three cluster organisations specialised in the biobased economy from regions with synergetic smart specialisations, 4 highly skilled and experienced SME intermediates considered as important opinion makers in the biobased economy and 2 cross-sectorial SMEs regarded as specialists in their respective activities. The biobased economy goes along at least 19 different industrial sectors.

The project aims at constructing and validating new value chains providing the SMEs in the new value chains the tools to convince investors to contribute to building new emerging industries or to generate improved processes or products.

SUPERBIO will create a comprehensive open collaboration space based on the combined network of all partners, an idea validation procedure and a complementary innovation support program. Specifically, we expect to identify 10 validated value chains. With an average of 3 SMEs per value chain, this would result in providing support to about 30 SMEs or 10 SME groups. Our approach ensures the validation of sustainable and commercially viable value chains.

The output of this project will lead to the implementation of new value chains, the production of drop-in chemicals and products the production of new chemicals and products with improved features and can lead to investments in dedicated industrial production sites.

Contacts: Anneleen Devriendt anneleen.de.vriendt@bbeu.org

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 SCALIBUR project

 SCALIBUR project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Challenge

In the EU over 100 million tonnes of biowaste are thrown away each year. Currently 75% of this goes to landfill or is incinerated, causing major environmental problems: biowaste produces greenhouse gases when it decomposes and contaminates soil and groundwater. Landfilling of biowaste goes against the principle of a circular economy and is a waste of nutrients, energy and potential resources for biobased products.

Solution

In the SCALIBUR project, leading waste management companies, technology developers and research organisations have teamed up with four European cities to demonstrate innovative solutions to transform urban food waste and sewage sludge into high value-added products, helping cities to increase their recycling rate and creating new circular economy business opportunities.

Contacts: James Ling: j.ling@greenovate-europe.eu

Capucine Pineau c.pineau@greenovate-europe.eu

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 RUBIZMO project

 RUBIZMO project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

RUBIZMO will identify business models with high potential for empowering rural communities to take advantage of the opportunities arising from improved value chain optimisation. It will directly supporting the creation of sustainable jobs and growth in rural economies, supporting a multi-actor approach for generation of shared-value. Ultimately, the project looks to contribute to rural development in Europe, supporting the Europe 2020 Strategy for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth, as well as supporting Regional and Rural Development policy.

To do this, the project will identify innovative business models (developed or identified in existing projects under FP7, H2020, Interreg, Central Europe, etc.) with a significant potential to support modernisation and sustainable growth in rural economies, and relevant to the food sector, bio-based value chains and ecosystem services. Business models with the potential to contribute to the modernisation and sustainable growth of rural economies will be selected, packaged and classified according to their nature, comprising technologies, services, business support structures, financing mechanisms, etc.

This will result in the creation of four practical, user-oriented tools:
– Virtual library of business cases, to inspire and inform potential entrepreneurs about business opportunities;
– Guidelines on creating favourable conditions for the deployment of innovative business models, to help public authorities and rural networks create adequate framework conditions for rural innovation;
– Toolkit for clustering and network development in rural areas;
– Transformation support tool, to help individual entrepreneurs understand which business models are best adapted to their situation, and how to go about implementing change.

The project will then prepare Europe-wide upscaling and replication in rural areas using real life cases, taking account of the complexity of transferring value chains.

Contacts: Justin Casimir: justin.casimir@ri.se
Daniel Lissoni d.lissoni@greenovate-europe.eu

Website

Virtual Library

Youtube channel

 PRO-ENRICH project

 PRO-ENRICH project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

The Pro-Enrich project will develop a flexible biorefinery approach able to processing a range of agricultural residues from rapeseed meal, olives, tomatoes and citrus fruit industries. This will help fulfil the growing global demand for alternative sources of protein and phenolic product streams.

The Pro-Enrich project will develop a flexible biorefinery approach able to processing a range of agricultural residues from rapeseed meal, olives, tomatoes and citrus fruit industries. This will help fulfil the growing global demand for alternative sources of protein and phenolic product streams.

Pro-Enrich take the process of fractionising biomass to a new level, identifying proteins, polyphenols, dietary fibres and pigments for use as food ingredients, pet food, cosmetics and adhesives.

Contacts: Africa Matilda Pardavila Morris: africa.pardavila@innovarum.es

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 ProBIO project

 ProBIO project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

ProBIO is a support action directly benefiting consortia of FP7 KBBE and H2020 bioeconomy. The overall objective is two-fold:

  1. To support the flow of knowledge-based bioeconomy project results from research to market, as well as back to R&I.
  2. To foster the networking and knowledge exchange between different European bioeconomy initiatives under H2020 and FP7 and the most important players in the field thus raising awareness towards policy makers and engaging the general public.

To achieve its objectives, ProBIO screens all 411 KBBE projects for results, describes them in interaction with the KBBE consortia, and finally classifies each result according to its nature. The results will be of different technological maturity level: some will be mature for direct market introduction, others need further development to reach a higher TRL, and some are not technological results, but knowledge and instruments of relevance to policy makers.
The ProBIO experts take this diverse nature and maturity level of research results into account and support each type of result with dedicated professional coaching and tools with a view to:

  1. Accelerating market entry through business coaching of the most promising R&D results
  2. Facilitating the flow of knowledge into new R&I projects in order to reach a higher TRL level
  3. Feeding policy-relevant results into the political process to inform policy making

ProBIO also foresees a range of events and communication activities supporting knowledge exchange and linkage of different actors along the bioeconomy value chains and making use of synergies through networking.

The multi-disciplinary team of the ProBIO consortium is built around highly specialised green innovation consultancies and a European expert group who together have an outstanding track record in promoting the uptake of results from public research. Additional thematic expertise is ensured by two technical centres, and communication is in professional hands, too.

Contacts: Ilaria Bonetti: ilaria.bonetti@mi.camcom.it

Website

 MPowerBIO project

 MPowerBIO project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Europe’s bioeconomy strategy addresses the production of renewable biological resources and their conversion into vital products and bioenergy. The industry is leading in innovative and sustainable solutions, but SMEs face challenges as regards investments. To address this issue, the EU-funded MPowerBIO will create an online platform with digital tools for evaluating and training skills, enabling SME readiness for investment. It will hold 10 train-the-trainer sessions for 90 European bioeconomy clusters. The aim is to improve capacity to support SMEs in the high-quality preparation process of presenting their projects to investors. The best SMEs will be selected to compete in two final events. In addition, 72 ready-for-investment SMEs will be selected and rewarded during the European Bioeconomy Venture Forum.

Contacts: Britt Sandvad (coordinator) Food & Bio Cluster Denmark: bs@foodbiocluster.dk

Website

 GO-GRASS project

 GO-GRASS project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Grasslands are important for land use in Europe, covering more than a third of the European agricultural area. Grasslands are also diverse in terms of management, yield and biodiversity value, providing forage and other key resources for Europe’s livestock sector. The EU-funded GO-GRASS project will create new opportunities in rural areas based on grassland and green fodder. These will be tested in four EU regions at small scale to ensure wide replication. Within a circular system, the project will develop business models that are circular, sustainable and suitable for remote areas with unexploited resources. The GO-GRASS consortium comprises a multidisciplinary team of 22 partners from 8 European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, Romania, Spain, and Sweden).

Contacts: Philipp Grundmann (coordinator): go-grass@atb-potsdam.de
Natalie Höppner (communication & dissemination): nah@esci.eu

Website

 Glaukos project

 Glaukos project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

The EU-funded Glaukos project aims to develop innovative and environmentally sustainable textile fibres and coatings. The complete life cycle of these textiles will be redesigned: their sustainability performance (i.e. biodegradability and bio-recyclability) will be enhanced significantly, while their technical performance will be matched to end-user requirements. Glaukos builds on two concepts: triggerable biodegradability as a key concept in polymer design to mitigate textile-based microplastics pollution, and bio-recycling as a sustainable end-of-life solution. The supply chain distance is also substantially reduced by scaling up a disruptive way of producing the main polymer building block from several bio-based feedstocks. The underlying objective of Glaukos is to reduce the carbon and the plastic footprint of clothing and fishing gear. Stakeholders’ engagement will be encouraged through the involvement of individuals from the clothing and fishing gear industry.

Contacts:

Project Coordinator Zsófia Kádár zsofia.kadar@bbeu.org

Project Manager Tanja Meyer tanja.meyer@bbeu.org

Project Communication and Dissemination Manager Louis Ferrini ferrini@fvaweb.it

Website

 ENABLING project

 ENABLING project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

ENABLING is the initiative of 16 partners in 13 EU and associated (IL, NO) countries. The main goal is to support the spreading of best practices and innovation in the provision (production, pre-processing) of biomass for the BBI (Bio-Based Industry).

In particular, ENABLING aims at creating appropriate conditions for the development of efficient biomass to BBPs (Bio-Based Products and Processes) value chains.

The consortium’s vision is that Europe bears a huge potential for optimising the supply of biomass into innovative bio-based processes and products.

Upscaling biomass production and pre-processing, and combining streams towards the BBPs with those of more traditional bioenergy chains would enhance at least three interlinked types of impact. a) biomass production gains scale to meet higher demand in both sectors (bioenergy and the BBI); b) the reinforcement of biomass supply for the BBI benefits smaller BBI players, helping them diversify and consolidate biomass input sources; c) reinforcing the biomass and BBPs linkages may contribute to job-creation, due to the increased need for specialised workers.

To realise such potential, ENABLING also anticipates its longer term exploitation pathways. In the intention of the consortium, the project should aggregate and engage partners for the establishment of a permanent innovation brokerage platform, likely to become in the future, one of the main marketplaces and innovation transfer accelerators at European level.

In this sense, the project organises its work around two building blocks: one relates to animating the stakeholders (on the farming and BBPs sides), identifying best practices, turning them into easy to access content (in the EIP format) for their potential users and providing stakeholders with coaching and guidance on innovation. The other one looks at future developments, with the consolidation, in a self-sustainable way, of the innovation brokerage platforms after the end of the EU funded initiative.

Contacts: Zusepe Elias Zidda: zusepe.zidda@euknow.eu

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