BIOrescue

Today a workshop, entitled 'Building sustainable value chains for the bio-based industry', is being held at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany.

The event is being organised as part of our Biomass Based Industries Joint Undertaking project BIOrescue.

Click here to see the agenda for the workshop and here to register.

Dan's presentation can be downloaded here.

Key industry players, researchers and regulatory bodies met at a workshop held in Madrid to discuss opportunities arising from the bio-based industry sector and discover the cutting-edge products and processes that will shape the Spanish bioeconomy of tomorrow.

The event was organised as part of the BIOrescue project which Celignis is a partner of. BIOrescue is developing a new biorefinery concept to recover used mushroom compost and other agricultural residues. As part of this project, experts are creating ground-breaking bio-based products such as tailor-made enzyme cocktails, biodegradable nanocapsules for targeted drug delivery, and low cost biopesticides. Celignis is responsible for much of the analytical work in the project and also for advancing the art in terms of the rapid analysis of biomass and of the products of biomass conversion.

An explanation of each product's characteristics, performance and applications was provided to workshop participants after a brief introduction of the project and biorefinery concept. 'In BIOrescue, we look of course at creating a circular economy in the mushroom industry, but we also see the numerous opportunities beyond', says Ines del Campo, Senior Research and Development Engineer and Project Manager at CENER, and coordinator of the BIOrescue project, 'In that sense, our biorefinery concept will be replicable with other types of agricultural residues, and thus relevant for other industries that generate large amounts of biomass waste'.

For the 40 participants, this workshop was also the occasion to explore the latest European and Spanish funding opportunities for the bio-based industry sector. To help attendees finding their way through the existing programmes and foster the development of new initiatives in the bio-based industry sector, Eduardo Cotillas and Marta de Diego from the Centre for the Development of Industrial technology (CDTI) introduced the different Spanish Research, Technology, Development and Innovation funding instruments, and presented European initiatives from the Horizon 2020 programme. Special attention from the audience was paid to the Bio-based Industry Joint Undertaking, the public-private partnership under which the BIOrescue project is funded.

In the final year of the project, BIOrescue experts will study the full life cycle of their products and processes, to demonstrate their positive impact on rural conomies, and especially on the environment. Then BIOrescue is set to launch the next generation of bio-based products and processes for the agro-food market and help establish a sustainable future for the mushroom industry.

Click here to download a handout from the event.

Our Director Daniel Hayes and biomass analyst Daniel Hickey are in Pamplona, Spain for the kick-off meeting of "BIOrescue" a collaborative research project funded by the European Union's Biomass Based Industries scheme.

We will be involved in project-related discussions with the 10 other BIOrescue partipant organisations at the Second Generation Biofuel Centre of CENER, the coordinator of the project.

Click here to see the press-release for this kick-off meeting.