Hello and

welcome to this special episode of the CORDIScovery podcast.

Today we're looking at the transition to a circular economy

and how this could pave the way for a cleaner and more competitive Europe.

Unlike the traditional linear model of take, make and dispose.

The circular approach focuses on reducing waste,

reusing resources, and designing products and systems that can last.

I'm joined today by representatives of three projects

that have received funding from the EU's Horizon Europe program.

These projects show how research and innovation are helping

Europe lead the way in making circularity a reality.

So welcome, first of all, to Mattia Comotto.

Mattia is a chemist by training.

He's a project manager of EFFECTIVE and head

of circular economy and sustainability at Aqua Film Group.

Ivar Palk, from Estonia,

is responsible for sales at Raiku Packaging which produces

natural compostable packaging material to substitute

bubble wrap and single use plastics.

And finally, Esthèle Goure, who is project acquisition

coordinator at Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant in Ghent.

She was the coordinator of the Waste2Funk project.

And she's a biotechnology engineer by training.

So welcome Mattia, Ivar and Esthèle.

Mattia, if I could start with you, your project aims to show

how bio-based ingredients can be used in the manufacturing of products across

a wide range of sectors, from construction to cars, from packaging to clothing.

Where do those bio-based ingredients come from, and why is this important?

Well, first of all, thank you for the invitation and for the question.

The source of our bio-based ingredient that we have demonstrated

with project EFFECTIVE basically comes from sugar.

Once you reach a certain quality that is suitable for the conversion

processes, the source of sugar no longer matters.

It can be sugar beets, it can be sugar cane starch,

even sugars that are produced from agricultural waste, for example.

So, quality is of key importance.

When you reach it, it’s only a matter of availability.

For industrial production, it's a matter of course of cost.

And then of course, it's a matter of sustainability.

The environmental impact that is associated to the production

of sugar,

that needs

to be taken into account when you try to develop a new and more sustainable solution.

And what would have happened to the different sources of this sugar

if you hadn't been able to find ways of reusing it?

Well, conventional sources of sugar, like sugar beets

or sugar cane, are traditionally used by the food industry.

We have worked with

a very big and

important firm producing sugar in Europe.

And what they told us is basically that

until 2016, there were quotas on sugar production.

After 2016, sugar coats were removed.

So of course, production increased,

but at the same time, market demand decreased.

For example, there are plenty of

sugar free solutions in the shops, so

they had a kind of surplus of production

that they are trying to valorise more

than keeping them on the stalk.

So that's a possibility of using

that share of sugar that is not a valorised right now.

For what concerns?

Agricultural wastes, for example, that basically were not used.

They can be used, for example, in bio digestion process

to produce biogas, biomethane, but

not really high value applications.

And once you've sourced the sugar and managed to extract it,

how does it then find its way into these various products that you're working on?

As I said, from construction to cars,

packaging, clothing, carpets, if I understand correctly.

How does that work?

Well, there are many conversion processes.

First, biotechnological processes with tiny microorganism

that eats sugar and produce target molecules that we use to produce.

Let's say, different families of plastic.

Within the project, we target two main families

that are polyamide and polyester, widely used polymers at global level.

that are polyamide and polyester, widely used polymers at global level.

If you think about polyester, plastic bottles,

If you think about polyester, plastic bottles,

polyamide, like woman tights

or raincoats, for example.

So, there are a different biotechnological

and then chemical processes that are run to convert sugar into the final plastic,

that is then converted into yarns, filament, films,

and potentially any application that we want to target.

And if I'm correct, your project has now finished, right?

Correct.

So might some of our listeners be wearing products

or walking across carpets or using items

that have been made with these, these different kinds of plastics?

We are not there yet.

Because we successfully demonstrated

the production of prototypes like you mentioned, carpets, swimsuits,

bike pants,

but we are not on a commercial scale yet.

We are finalising the fine tuning of the technology,

the ambition of achieving the targets,  and the KPI that we said.

And once we managed to do that, uh, the very last mile will be to set up

an industrial scale facility, able to produce large volumes

of this biomaterial that then can be used in the products

that you mentioned, and the consumers can experience and feel that.

Okay, maybe let's come back to that in the general discussion,

because we're talking a lot about startups and scale ups in Europe at the moment.

So, it would be interesting to hear about your experience and the other guests.

What could help you take it to the next stage?

But now, let's turn to Ivar, representing the Raiku project here.

Your project aims to optimize the use of wood

as a natural biodegradable material for packaging.

Can you, I mean, it sounds quite obvious.

But can you explain this to us why it's preferable

to use wood, rather than plastic for packaging?

You know, with plastic, it’s of course the carbon footprint

that will be a big difference in the production processes.

But also, you know, is there more e-commerce and more shipping products?

On the other side 30% of Europeans don’t recycle.

So, we need material and natural material that can recycle itself.

That’s the major thing.

Right, right.

And would I be correct in thinking that it's less resource-intensive

to produce packaging, in terms of water and energy

and so on, using wood rather than plastics?

Yes, of course.

There’s 2 to 3 times the difference.

And, for example, some people think that, okay,

paper is more environmentally friendly.

But for example, compared to paper,

the whole process takes

like 10 to 20 hours, and for us to make the springs,

the packaging material, it takes 30 seconds.

So, it takes a lot less energy,

like more than 10.000 times less water

and also 50 times less energy.

I see, I see.

And how do you make sure that you source the wood in a sustainable

way, avoiding deforestation and so on? Yes.

So, first of all,

our supplier gets the wood from sustainably managed forests,

and also, we get kind of the offcuts

of the supplier

products, which they can’t sell anymore because they don’t fit their demand.

So, we get it from that side.

And also,

the wood that we use is alder wood, which is not popularly used in Europe.

And mostly burned to get energy.

The way we make the product is so effective

that 1m³ of wood, they get 20m³ of packaging material.

So, it’s like making popcorn.

And maybe I'll ask you a similar question to the one I asked Mattia,

I mean, is the solution you're working on commercially available currently?

Yeah.

We’re on the market and we have over

100 customers from 15 different countries.

Okay, so you've got a busy job doing sales for Raiku then.

For sure.

Okay, very good.

Let me turn to Esthèle, the Waste2Func project.

You work for the Bio Base Europe pilot plant, here in Belgium, in Ghent,

which is a service provider for bio-based products and processes.

And you're in the business of converting agricultural and industrial food

waste into raw materials that can be used to make consumer products.

The Waste2Func project demonstrated the production of bio surfactants and lactic acid

from food waste from agriculture, the food industry, supermarkets, and restaurants.

Perhaps, could you tell us what are bio surfactants and lactic acid

and why are they useful for producing these kinds of products?

That’s a long question that I could answer for a lot of hours.

The short answer, yeah.

Indeed, so maybe to tackle this question, two things.

The project is building around food

waste and lactic acid and biosurfactants, indeed. Why?

It's because lactic acid and bio surfactants are everywhere in your world.

I hope that you brushed your teeth this morning

because the toothpaste is containing surfactants

and can help you, the foamy stuff in your mouth, for instance.

So, surfactants are everywhere in the world.

And basically, today, you could find it in

customer products, like laundry, like cleaning products.

But also paint, ink.

When you’re writing, this nice wave when you’re

having the pen on paper, that’s surfactants.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of fossils-based

surfactants that are starting to be banned.

But to be honest, that’s the majority of the market for now, and bio surfactants are

already starting to be commercialised via biotechnological routes,

like you mentioned, but those ones are built upon

a value chain of first-generation sugar, meaning that the sustainability behind

that is quite challenging.

So, the Waste2Func was built

about food waste to make this sustainability a bit better

and also to provide those new molecules to the market that address a lot of needs.

And for lactic acid, it's a more common chemical.

You have it in different application,

but you can go to PLA, so a polymer, for instance.

But nothing yet on the market from food waste.

So that's why the innovation of this project

was really building around food waste to make it more sustainable.

And the two molecules that are addressing needs on the consumer market.

Right, right.

From the consumer perspective, as you say, you know,

we all brush our teeth in the morning, I imagine

some people might be a bit nervous about the idea of brushing their teeth

with something that has been made partly using food or industrial waste.

How do you go about reassuring consumers that all of this is safe and healthy?

That’s a good, good question.

In the project, so on a European project, there are a lot

of partners, right?

We are the only ones, let’s say, scale of facility.

So, we really focus on the technical part, but overall, in the project,

there were also end users, so ECOVER, and ECOVER did a lot of consumer studies.

Also, we tried out

different marketing interactions

to make sure that the messaging was clear and made sense.

And there were a lot of drawbacks

to circularity, because people did not really understanding it.

And that's why the prototype that we produced

was focusing on “waste is not waste if it’s not wasted”.

And that messaging was

a bit strong in comparison with all the other type of messaging.

And I think that's some nice information

that the technology owner, AmphiStar for bio surfactants

and TRIPLEW for lactic acid, learned and now they're working on

how commercialise the product to make sense to the consumer.

But it really depends on the market, because, for instance,

surfactant you could find in agrochemicals when you spray things on the crops

up to your toothpaste, but up to the paint.

So the market is different, so the message should be different as well.

I see that your Waste2Func

project is also finished now like Mattia’s project.

If I understand correctly, I mean, you were at the stage

of developing prototypes, but not yet making these products

commercially available,

but I think there were two spinoff projects,

which presumably are taking you a little bit further on the journey.

Can you say a little bit about that? Yeah, indeed.

So, Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant was the coordinator of Waste2Func.

And in this project, as I mentioned, TRIPLEW and AmphiStar were two start-ups

that were building their technology from TRL five to TRL seven.

Maybe for our listeners, we should just explain

that TRL is a technology readiness level.

So it's basically, that they had already their concept proven

at the end of production scale, let's say.

But the TRL seven is really to have hundreds of kilos

to address formulation and make sure that the end user, like ECOVER, but also

Procter and Gamble, Unilever, any kind of end user, could use their product.

So, it's not there at the large-scale production, but it's there that the technology

is at risk of making investment to build their own factory.

That would be the next step.

And basically, I'm answering the question by saying that the Waste2Func Project

ended last year, in November,

and throughout this year, we start to get a lot of funding, even on the EIC Accelerator.

TRIPLEW also got a new EIC Accelerator a year before,

Along that there are a lot of investments and different grants

So, they are in the shape of building their capacity to produce for the market.

And, indeed,

in parallel, two European projects got funded,

where I’m still the coordinator

for the bio surfactant line that is called Surf’s Up

where we developed a lot of different bio surfactant for the market,

where Ajinomoto, Unilever and Eco will also try it out.

And for TripleW, they are building their flagship.

So, it's SBO funding and it's building their own plants in Amsterdam.

So that's quite cool.

Okay. Very interesting.

Can I just return to you, Mattia, because we

finished by, sort of asking this question

about what it would take to, to bring your project to the next stage.

Having listened to Esthèle's experience, you mentioned the EIC

accelerator grant, for example, in the spin-off projects.

What are your plans?

That's a great question.

Certainly, the plan is to finalise the development program.

As I said, we had set a few years ago

some targets, some KPIs for production, yields, quality, etc.

that we need to achieve before starting to take the last mile.

Once we’ve reached those targets,

the work that we have had

is to set up a commercial facility.

This sounds like a very simple task, but actually it is

not because these tasks

require significant investment

and, let's say, the market scenario right now maybe is not the best.

Why is that?

Well, the

price of energy, especially in Europe, is quite high, and energy

is, a significant cost in any industrial facilities.

Certainly, one step that we need to explore

a little bit more in detail is the availability of feedstock.

So where can we source

sugars at a reasonable price with a good environmental footprint?

So, there are different uh, area that we need to deep dive

a little bit more in order to have a clearer picture

on where this industrial facility

built, and can produce a large volume of the product that we are currently developing.

Okay. And do you think you can do that in Europe?

That's certainly an option.

We have run our development program in Europe, so

it might be a logical next step to follow up

this project with the industrial facility in Europe.

Again, it's an option.

We are exploring it.

Certainly,

it would be a fantastic solution, especially for Aquafil,

the company I work for,

because we have a unique recycling facility in Slovenia,

in the city of Ljubljana, where we chemically recycle

nylon six waste both pre- and post-consumer.

So it would be a, let me say,

a nice story of sustainability, having a plant in Europe

that is able to recycle waste and at the same time

having a different plant that is able to produce the same polymer,

the same type of plastic from plant based raw material.

I'd like to explore another issue with the three of you,

which is the potential of circular solutions.

To bring positive benefits for the environment, but also to have

a positive economic effect.

And Esthèle, if I'm not mistaken, your,

bio-based Europe pilot plant employs, around 160 people.

So clearly there's been, job creation and, economic activity there.

So, what is the potential in your view?

It's a broad question again, but for the bio base

pilot plant, we are a pilot and demo infrastructure in Europe.

So, we do help Start-Ups, SMEs and corporations to

scale up their processes, biotech processes,

up to the commercial level that they want to make sure

that they either go to a CMO or build their own plant.

So, the 160 employees is quite consequent, but it's not enough

to make sure that all the technologies are going to the market,

but the creation of employment and so on.

We see it from Start-Ups, for instance, and the SMEs that are growing

like AmphiStar.

When we ended the project, they were five, and now 25.

So those numbers are quite consistent.

And same for tripleW. Building their own plants means that they need to employ operators,

technicians and so on and so forth.

that's really concrete.

And that's thanks to the investment in European projects,

but also the technology readiness that is moving on.

So that's quite nice. Okay.

And, Ivar, you mentioned the Raiku products are commercially available,

can you give us an idea of what kind of workforce you have, what kind

of, economic dividends your business brings in? Yeah.

Compared to the others, we are like a pretty small group.

We have like 20 people.

From there, like ten of us are engineers.

So yeah, we’re still young in that sense.

And how young is the company?

The idea started like four years ago.

Okay. So quite recent.

So, first year, as we started from scratch, there wasn't

any such technology before,

it took a lot of time to figure it out, like how to make it.

And are there plans to bring the business to

a next level?

Yeah.

They're scaling up right now.

So we have peak demand.

But we also need to fulfill that demand as well.

So, we’re increasing production.

And also, in the next couple of years, we're planning to expand to,

for example, the France as well, where it's like a big luxury market.

And what would be the biggest challenge

there is?

Is it finding infrastructure or capital

or the right talent to help grow your business?

Yes. Just increasing that production, getting the new machinery.

Because otherwise the machineries, they’re pretty modular.

We can scale up and that it's you know, unique in that way.

But, yeah, just growing up.

Okay, okay.

One last question for the three of you.

If you could just summarise in one sentence,

how you would encourage people,

what kind of positive message you would send out to people out there?

To encourage them to consider circular solutions?

What would it be in a nutshell?

Mattia, would you care to go first?

Yeah.

I start from what Esthèle just said.

Waste is not waste until it is wasted.

So, certainly, one topic,

each of us could work on the regulation side.

Because we should avoid that product ends up as a waste.

But it can be used as a new resource,

or secondary raw material for the production of circular products.

That's certainly one key topic.

Thank you very much.

Esthèle, do you have something to add?

Yeah. I will stay positive.

I can assure you that there is growth beyond circularity

and that there is employment.

And there is excitement behind the technology because, indeed,

we are not making, like AI or robots, but the technology is quite innovative,

quite strong,

and I think it's worth digging a bit more and investing a bit more, indeed.

Thanks a lot, Esthèle.

And Ivar?

I think we shouldn't be afraid of trying out new products and things.

If you are a consumer, decision maker in companies, don’t

be afraid to try it out and give it a chance.

Who knows, maybe you will start liking it.

Thanks very much for those positive concluding words.

Thanks very much to our guests for joining us,

and to you for listening to this episode.

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