The overarching objective of Allthings.bioPRO is to devise effective ways of increasing awareness, participation and co-creation of the bio-based industry among citizens. This will help harvest valuable feedback and inputs for the industry on current perceptions. Allthings.bioPRO will create and implement a highly innovative gamification ecosystem combining a serious game, a smartphone app and on- and offline communication and engagement activities to enable citizens to provide direct input into the agenda of the bio-based industry. The project will apply a comprehensive participatory approach to engage citizens and all quadruple helix stakeholders in the co-design and co-creation of a serious online game as innovative tool to raise awareness, support learning and gather citizen generated input and data.

The project focusses on four themes closely related to everyday life: food packaging, fashion and textiles, kids and schools, and jobs and careers. These themes are central to the serious game and smartphone app and will also guide an associated public communication campaign, building on the current BioCannDo project.

The Biobridges Projects aims to boost the marketability of sustainable bio-based products (BBPs) by establishing close cooperation and partnership between bio-based Industries (BBIs), brand owners and consumers’ representatives. The ultimate goal of the project is to stimulate and support the active engagement of and interaction among all stakeholders (including local communities and local authorities) and improve market acceptance of BBPs. Biobridges will design and implement replicable methodologies, procedures and good practices supporting multistakeholders’ interaction, leading to new cross-sector partnerships, such main activities will be identify the cooperation challenges among consumers, brand owners and BBI, create a sustainable multi-stakeholder community involving consumer representatives, BBI and brand owners from different bio-based economy clusters and stimulate dialogue and cooperation, following a co-creation approach, increase consumers’ and brand owners’ awareness, confidence and trust on the benefits of BBPs compared to the fossil-based counterparts, support the establishment of at least 2 new cross-cutting interconnections in bio-based economy clusters and define replicable procedures and good practices leading to the establishment of new cross-sector partnerships and business opportunities, stimulate the multi-stakeholder discussion toward pre-and co-normative research, new standardisation/labelling and emerging co-creation models (B2B and B2C).

BIOFOREVER (BIO-based products from FORestry via Economically Viable European Routes) is an European project to demonstrate the feasibility of conversion of lignocellulosic feedstocks like wood into chemical building blocks and high added value products. The project will run under the umbrella of the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU) which is a public private partnership between the European Union and the Biobased Industry Consortium. The BIOFOREVER project consortium consists of 14 European companies. The project will run 3 years from September 2016- September 2019 with a total investment of 16 million euro.

The BIOFOREVER project objective is the technical and economical demonstration of 5 different value chains from feedstock to final product. Within this framework, several conversion technologies will be demonstrated up to pre-industrial scale for several types of feedstock while commercialization routes for the most promising value chains will be delivered.

BIOVOICES is a project that will manage over 80 events involving research, industry, policy and civil society stakeholders with the aim increase the quality, relevance, know-how and social acceptability of bio-based products in order to deliver the bioeconomy and a more sustainable world.

To achieve this, BIOVOICES is creating a Mobilisation and Mutual Learning (MML) platform in the bio-based domain to promote dialogue and the co-creation of research, innovation, development and political content to promote bio-based engagement between all stakeholders. This platform builds on the methods developed previously in European projects with the ultimate objective of delivering an Action Plan addressing the challenges of raising awareness of and engaging with the citizens on the bio-based products.

The BBI JU-funded project BIOWAYS was launched in 2016 with the aim to help other projects in the bioeconomy sector increase the awareness of their bio-based research findings. The BIOWAYS mission was to promote the huge potential of bio-based research results and raise public awareness of bio-based products, using a variety of communication techniques and through public engagement activities and the development of educational tools and materials.

The consortium was made up of consultancy companies, university and communication experts whose expertise came together to develop excellent promotional and educational materials and to design and implement pubic engagement activities with the aim of promoting bio-based industries and the bioeconomy in general.

The Central Europe LEaders in Bioeconomy (CELEBio) project aims at strengthening the enabling environment for bio-based businesses in eight countries of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe that, according to the EU Innovation Scoreboard, are “moderate or modest innovators” and that register scarcer interest for the activities and opportunities offered by BIC and BBI-JU. This goal will be pursued by compiling and sharing fact-based information as well as by promoting networking among stakeholders in a broader regional and continental scope.

The main objective of CELEBio is therefore to contribute to encourage the uptake of Bioeconomy in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Slovak Republic and Slovenia through the elaboration of evidence-based Action Plans for each of the targeted countries, as well as through the dissemination of information on the opportunities offered by BBI. To this end, the CELEBio project team will support the setting-up of a network of BBI info points (BBI Ambassadors). In order to set the grounds for further action in support of the uptake of bio-based technologies and facilitate matchmaking between stakeholders in research and industry, the CELEBio project team will map Bioeconomy stakeholders.

The purpose of the INGREEN project is to demonstrate the feasibility of sustainable, efficient and safe tailor-made biotechnologies in real operational environments. It will also show eco-friendly approaches for producing safe and/or health-promoting microbial biomasses, functional ingredients such as prebiotics, pre-fermented food ingredients and biochemical raw materials to supply the food, feed, pharmaceutical and cosmetic sectors. Once they have been demonstrated as safe, the ingredients from the INGREEN project will find their way into foods such as cheeses, bakery products and other nutritious products.

The INGREEN ingredients will be part of so-called ‘functional’ foods, which can provide health benefits beyond basic nutrition. These include improving digestion, strengthening the immune system, helping control body weight and preventing conditions such as high blood pressure.

The LIFT project seeks to maximise the impact of Coordination and Support Actions (CSAs) by valorising their outcomes and promoting the collaboration among them, aiming at identifying gaps to be addressed to ensure a stimulating environment boosting the Bio-Based economy.

It also aims at mapping and analysing the results of work performed by CSAs on Bioeconomy topics funded in the last years by FP7, H2020, BBI JU and Interreg, to provide a global overview of projects’ results, making them readily available, integrated and actionable by industries and policy makers.

LIFT analysed 64 projects and initiatives, and facilitated Mobilisation and Mutual Learning activities, to provide a comprehensive overview of project’s outcomes, gaps still to be bridged and recommendations for the stakeholders. Additionally, it has created the Bioeconomy Library that collects all of the knowledge in once place.

Many SMEs experience that, even though they have a good idea or a good product, they cannot get funds or investment. They need to be able to pitch their idea perfectly, to the right investors and at the right time.  MPowerBIO aims to help them by developing an online platform containing digital tools for evaluating investment readiness. It will also create a set of online training modules to build the capacity of clusters to train their SME members and give them the best possibilities for preparing and presenting high quality projects to investors.

In addition, 10 Train-the-trainer events will be organised for a total of 90 clusters across the bioeconomy, covering most of Europe. The best SME projects from these events will be selected and invited to one of two European final events, where they will have the chance to present their ideas to a panel of investors and experts from large organisations and venture funds in Europe.

In total, the project is expected to screen and support 350 SMEs, of which 72 are expected to pitch at the two final events.

Transition2Bio

Transition2BIO will support the transition towards the bioeconomy for a more sustainable future through communication, education and public engagement. It will built upon the most relevant communication and education EU funded projects and initiatives to contribute to the implementation of the updated 2018 EU Bioeconomy Strategy and promote the transition towards a more sustainable production, consumption and lifestyle by implementing an integrated package of activities addressing a wide range of target stakeholders, namely: demand side; supply side; multipliers and supportive environment.