Advancing plans to support the scaleup of the EU’s Bioeconomy Strategy, the European Commission has launched three initiatives to boost the sector.
The first of these is the Bio-Based Europe Alliance (BEA). Aimed at supporting market scale-up, the Commission is calling for expressions of interest to participate. The BEA will focus on addressing gaps across the value chain that “prevent companies from scaling up and reaching full market deployment of bio-based materials and products.”
The Commission says that the BEA initiative is in response to the longstanding challenges facing Europe’s bio-based sector. "Significant public and private investment has supported research, innovation and demonstration activities, but many promising companies in the bio-based sector continue to struggle to reach commercial phase,” the Commission said as the BEA was announced. “As a result, innovative European startups are often acquired by non-European investors before reaching full industrial deployment, with economic value and strategic know-how leaving Europe.”
The BEA will be organised around a digital platform that will collect demand, and supply offers from companies and provide aggregation and matchmaking services, leading to collective purchasing for a wide range of bio-based materials and products. Buyers will purchase exclusively via the platform and submit requested volumes anonymously with no mention of price allowed. The platform might offer an option of having third companies acting as central buyers that will offer multiple purchasers to buy on their behalf. It aims to promote lead markets for materials including biobased plastics and polymers; biobased fibers and fabrics; biobased chemicals; biobased construction products; biobased fertilisers and plant protection products; and lead markets for technologies such as biorefineries, advanced fermentation and developing permanent storage of biogenic carbon.
This will help to create “predictable demand signals needed to unlock investment and bring innovative solutions to commercial scale,” the Commission added. The BEA will be officially launched during the Global Bioeconomy Summit which will be held in Dublin 20-21 October.
To strengthen financial support for the bio-based industries, the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking and the European Commission have also established the Bioeconomy Investment Deployment Group. This group will bring together commercial banks, national promotional banks, venture capital funds and institutional investors, with the aim of increasing the financial sector’s awareness of bioeconomy opportunities.
The third strand of the Commission’s new support is the Expert Group on Bioeconomy. This group will allow member states to assist the Commission in the implementation of the new strategic framework for a competitive and sustainable EU bioeconomy.
These developments have been welcomed by the Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association: “The opportunity is enormous. The transition from fossil carbon to renewable biological resources has the potential to transform how we manufacture chemicals, materials, textiles, food ingredients and consumer products. But achieving this at scale will depend on creating markets, attracting investment and building confidence throughout value chains. Encouragingly, these latest announcements suggest the Commission is increasingly focused on exactly those challenges.”
Further reading:
- Six new centres aim to grow bioeconomy research
- New project seeks to create sustainable bio-based polymers
- New investment fund supports the bioeconomy
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