BIOSWITCH has come to its end!

On May 17, from 10:00 to 14:00 (CEST) the BIOSWITCH project hosted its online final event & train-the-trainer workshop with more than 50 attendees.

The event started with the welcome and introduction from the communications manager of the project, Jeisel Goyanes, from Sustainable Innovations. The project coordinator Anna Tenhunen-Lunkka from CLIC Innovation Oy provided an overview of the BIOSWITCH project, including the key expected impacts, the challenges that the BIOSWITCH Toolbox responds to, and the approaches that have been followed to put Europe at the forefront of the bio-based economy.

The first session of the event started with the presentation on The role of brand owners and consumers in shaping a bio-based transition for Europe by Emily Marsh from Munster Technological University. During this session, the results of different surveys and focused groups were presented, so participants had the chance to learn about brand owners’ perceptions when switching to bio-based, including the main barriers and top risks, perceived drives for growth of consumer demand and much more.

The event continued with the presentation on Concrete tools to support brand owners in the shift from fossil-based to bio-based approaches. John Vos, from the Biomass Technology Group and Carmen Ronchel, from the Technological Corporation of Andalusia introduced the BIOSWITCH Toolbox, a group of materials aimed to support and boost brand owners’ transition from fossil-based to bio-based approaches, and four case studies representing four different value chains.

Thordkild Qvist, from Food & Bio Cluster Denmark, and Emma Sidgwick, from Flanders’FOOD, were the main speakers of the third session focused on How to build and strengthen bio-based value chains.  In this session hosted by Anna Tenhunen-Lunkka (CLIC Innovation Oy), it was discussed the urgency of today to transition to bio-based solutions and how this can be accelerated by forming those value chains and #partnerships. Thordkild Qvist and Emma Sidgwick introduced the tools for matchmaking developed in BIOSWITCH and real case examples.

After that, a very interesting panel discussion took place composed of top experts from the BIOSWITCH Advisory Board members: Marco Rupp, from the Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC), Milica Folic, from Topsoe and Dennies Herzberg from Cluster Industrielle Biotechnologie (CLIB). Different topics were covered such as:

• Reaching carbon neutrality and how bio-based value chains can accelerate that;
• Supply security – fostering replacing fossil-based feedstock;
• Collaboration across stakeholders – pledges and initiatives for bio-based materials and solutions.

In each of the sessions, participants could interact with the speakers through the Q&A zoom function and they were also required to provide feedback on the materials and research that were presented.

For the second part of the event, the Train-the-Trainer workshop took place to support cluster managers, innovation agents and public administration to become familiar with the BIOSWITCH Toolbox so they can help brand owners from their regions when switching to bio-based approaches.

Marta Macías, from Technological Corporation of Andalusia, was in charge of welcoming the attendees, reviewing the training programme and explaining the project service “Build me the value-chain”. Also, Jeisel Goyanes, from Sustainable Innovations, presented the self-assessment tool, while Tiina Vainio-Kaila, from VTT, explained the Sustainability Assessment tool.

The event closed with some final remarks and the invitation to visit the project website and follow the project’s social media channels.