There are many ingenious and innovative ideas for creating bio-based products coming from different sectors, that have the potential for improving the collaboration between actors in the bioeconomy. In this scenario, stimulating the consumers perception and acceptability towards bio-based products, can have a direct impact on incrementing the offer of such products from the brands, and consequently increasing the demand of bio-based resources from the industry.

To support countries where bio-based business sector is less mature or not developed, like the case of Slovakia that imports more bio-based products than is using rather than developing its local resources, the following recommendations have been identified.

Universities around Europe and the world could contribute to the awareness of the importance of bio-based products by holding more educational lectures, including not only students but also the wide public.
To contribute to a wider exposure, bio-based sector should put more effort into communication which could represent “louder” advertisements in media, especially by focusing on success stories and examples of real bio-based products out there, outlining that they are in line with sustainability, environmental and climate goals.
Recognising the environmental values associated with bio-based products can also be supported by standardised certification, so that people can easily recognise bio-based products.
There are several bioeconomy strategies at different levels European, national and in some cases also regional, but there is a lack in concrete implementation plans of these strategies. The development of a common bioeconomy narrative could effectively support this process.
There is a general need to help SMEs to overcome operational stress and a capacity shortage with respect to innovation as well as a stronger integration into emerging transnational and global value chains, what would also be supported by enhancing a better level of dialogue and cooperation among all the actors in the quadruple helix.
All the ideas and recommendations for boosting bio-based economy presented above are widely discussed in several documents developed by Biobridges project, which summarise the outputs collected from several co-creation workshops all around Europe.

Access to these documents below:

Recommendations to enhance collaboration among industry, brand owners and consumers (CLICK HERE)
Proceedings from EU, national and regional co-creation events and policy debates (CLICK HERE)
This article is brought to you courtesy of the Biobridges project in which Pedal Consulting is a partner.

Author: Robert Miskuf (PEDAL Consulting)

The beginnings of the company
Biopolis was founded in Valencia, Spain as a spin−off company of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), together with three industrial partners: CAPSA, Talde Private Equity and Naturex España S.A.
The founder (Dr. Ramón) had worked at CSIC for 23 years. He was Professor at the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology of CSIC and coordinator of the Food Science and Technology CSIC area. They were very good at publishing and participating in European projects, but they had a very low score of technology transfer to the sector. A new paradigm was needed, where scientists had contact with industry. With that purpose, CSIC boosted the foundation of Biopolis. Today, the company is 90% ADM and 10% CSIC.

Facing the challenges: Innovation transfer, networking, legislation and harmonization
The challenges detected for the company were:

Innovation transfer: The biggest challenge for Biopolis was the lack of an enabling business environment for innovation and technology transfer. There were not structures or political leaders boosting the creation of such environment.
Collaboration, networking and knowledge exchange: despite being a spin-off of a public company, it was difficult to find proper partners to develop the business and attract investments (funding, incentives and investors).
Legislation stability, harmonisation and labeling, standards and certification: The company has found barriers in the legislation regarding the quality of the production plant and the process of bio-based products. They dedicated a lot of time, money and effort to learn how to adapt to the legislation (self-training). For instance, they certified all their products with the highest quality certification, as it is better to exceed rather than than falling short of quality standards.
Feedstock: They haven´t had any difficulties with the feedstock availability because they are their own producers, and their client is responsible of the transportation cost.
The solution: business model, growth and funding strategy
In 2003, Biopolis board of directors conducted a study of the Spanish biotechnology industry, which concluded that many Biotech companies were sustained fundamentally by autonomic public funds. According to Daniel Ramón, the founders were forbidden to seek for public funds and received €56.000, with the condition that in 2 years they must earn profits.
The founders visited food, chemical and pharma companies, offering them their services. In 2 years, they made profit and in 5 years they had enough to create the “Lifesequencing” division.
According to Daniel Ramón “our philosophy is to always put the client first. This has not changed with ADM acquisition”. He also explained that it was not easy to find the first clients. They rented a car and visited several companies with the following offer: “Hello, we know how to do R&D, how can we help you?”. But most of the companies refused to give them a chance to prove themselves.
However, things changed when they arrived at Ordesa, an infant nutrition company of Barcelona, and met Montse Rivero (who was at that time, the scientific director).
“She trusted us. I have asked her many times why and she always says that she saw such curiosity and passion in us, that she was touched by us”, said Daniel. Since then, more clients arrived, and in 2 years Biopolis was achieving profits.

Conclusion with three recommendation for other companies who are starting:
Know your entities of reference be proactive, speak with such entities and learn about their journey in the business. After that, you will have to knock many doors before entering in the first one, which will be, obviously, the most difficult. Try to keep at least 2-3 clients that cover most of the activities of the company, which can support you in different situations.
Emulate success cases happening in other countries, such as The Netherlands and their matured technology transfer system or USA and their open regulation, where you can ask for advice before delivering anything.
Know your market and consumers (in their case it is stratified like this): early adopters characterised by being a small market of consumers who like being surprised, and can be considered the drivers of the future whom are willing to pay more; Selective market represented by senior people interested in special products; and low income market comprised by elderly lean towards cheap products things.
This story is brought to you courtesy of the Biobridges project in which Pedal Consulting is a partner.

Online

10:30 – 11:30 (CET)

Altfinator aims at stimulating alternative finance instruments (other than bank finance) among innovative SMEs.
Reward-based crowdfunding involves individuals contributing comparatively small amounts of money to business projects in return for some kind of reward, which often is a production version of the crowdfunded product. Reward crowdfunding helps business projects not only to raise finance but to test market acceptance before launching new products, and it is a powerful marketing tool that is being progressively used by small and large firms too.
Guest speakers:
Jonàs Sala, co-founder of the professional reward crowdfunding online platform Verkami will present what are the benefits for SMEs of this type of finance, what might be the risks and how they are mitigated, and how it works in practice.
Clara Guasch, Chief Communication Officer of the innovative SMEs Cocorintim will tell its successful experience in raising finance through reward crowdfunding, how/why they decided to use this financing instrument? How did they get to succeed in the finance raising campaign? What should be considered by other SMEs when raising this type of finance?
The webinar will end with a ‘questions & answers’ session.
Pedal is a partner in the Altfinator project.
REGISTER in this LINK

Understand the key success factors of Alternative Finance providers and best practices applied in the following benchmark countries: UK, USA, Estonia, The Netherlands.

Download the report HERE.

These best practices are brought to you courtesy of the Altfinator project whose mandate is to facilitate the transfer of best practices from more advanced to less advanced markets through designing, developing and implementing a capacity-building strategy for the financial ecosystem and its participants in South, Central and Eastern European countries to improve the provision and absorption of Alternative Financing.

Pedal is a partner in the Altfinator project.

February 7, 2020, the second meeting of Polish organizations taking part in the YOUTH IMPACT project took place in the office Foundation in Support of Local Democracy in Warsaw. It was attended by representatives of organizations, which run projects supporting youth employment and entrepreneurship.

During the meeting, FRDL representatives dr Monika Bartosiewicz and dr Sławomir Nałęcz presented to the participants the main objectives of the YOUTH IMPACT project, and explained how their organizations can get support in the field of evaluation. They also discussed with participants the benefits of a well-conducted evaluation and how its results can help managers to improve ways of running the organization.

In the next months, FRDL will work with the organizations and cooperate to design together the employment evaluation toolbox (WP4).

PEDAL Consulting is a partner in the Youth Impact Project.

There are several groups of youth facing serious challenges in their transition from education to work phase of their lives. One of these groups are women. As for the average in the 28 countries of the European Union the 2016 Eurofound’s report “Exploring the diversity of NEETs” described “there is a great imbalance in the gender composition of the category of those who are NEET due to family responsibilities. The share of young men is slightly higher in all other categories – re-entrants (of whom 53% are male), short-term unemployed (55%), long-term unemployed (60%), discouraged workers (57%), unavailable because of illness or disability (55%). However, young women constitute 88% of all 15–24 year-olds who are NEET due to family responsibilities.” (Eurofound2016)

The findings on highest NEET rate among inactive women correspond with the Eurofound’s report revealing that Poland is one of the countries, where “the share of young NEETs who are unavailable for work due to . . . family responsibilities is particularly high.”

Low female participation in labour market in Poland is “related to strong family values shaped by deep-rooted Catholicism and a relatively weak although improving institutional childcare infrastructure, in particular in rural areas.” (Magda et al. 2018) However, according to the study The Effects of Large Universal Child Benefits on Female Labour Supply the recent growth of the inactivity among women may be resulting (among others) from Family 500+ Programme. This programme, which aim was to increase fertility and reduce child poverty, seems to have reduced motivation to work among families with children, and widened already substantial gender gap in the category of inactive NEETs. A factor of insufficiency of affordable, high-quality social care services also plays a role and was mentioned among key employment challenges in 2018 Europe 2020 Employment Performance.

Such data showing the imbalance in the NEET categories suggests that much can be improved not by labour market services or activation actions, but rather policy interventions, which would support childcare and social care for young women family members to promote their re-integration into the labour market or education.

Find more information HERE.

PEDAL is a partner in the Youth Impact project.

This year from the 27th to 30th of April 2020 in Marseille, the 28th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition (#EUBCE2020) will address the theme “Transition to a Bioeconomy”.

On the 29th of April 2020, Biobridges will organise the workshop “switch to bio-based” as a side event of conference.

The specific objectives of workshop are:

to facilitate feedstock availability and sustainability,
to raise quality of feedstock,
to support the creation of supply chains, and
to stimulate collaboration, networking and knowledge.
The event is most relevant for feedstock providers to stay up-to-date with the latest developments from the bio-based industry.

Get more information about the event HERE

World Bio Markets will organise the conference Commercialising the bio economy from land to brand from the 23rd to the 25th of March 2020 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

On the first day of the Conference 23rd of March 2020, Biobridges will organise its co-creation workshop tackling the needs and challenges to drive the bioeconomy forward.

The objectives of Conference are orientated to technical discussions about bio-based chemicals, materials and product manufacturing; investment trends; sustainable brands and sustainability strategies; bio inspiring start-ups; and networking.

The topic of the Conference is of most relevant for industries.

PEDAL Consulting is a partner in the Biobridges project.

The BBI JU Stakeholder Forum 2019 took place in Brussels, Belgium on 4 December 2019. The second edition of the BBI JU Stakeholder Forum was a one-day public event that brought together the bio-based industries community and facilitated open discussion on the impact, achievements and strategic direction of the Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU) programme, as well as the latest developments in the bio-based industries sector.

In the context of the BBI JU Stakeholder Forum 2019, the project LIFT (https://www.lift-bbi.eu/) organised, in close collaboration with BBI JU, a Mobilisation and Mutual Learning Workshop among the CSA projects, and selected non-CSA projects funded under other programmes than Horizon 2020, with the goal of promoting the creation of an innovation ecosystem for the bioeconomy. Biobridges supported the organisation and the moderation of the workshop.

38 CSAs presented the lessons learnt from their projects and discussed the challenges still to be addressed for bioeconomy uptake in 4 facilitated sessions, involving more than 350 participants.
Biobridges also shared its lessons learnt and recommendations regarding stakeholders’ engagement and co-creation during the Policy Framework parallel session.
In the BBI JU Stakeholder Forum, Biobridges also presented the BIOArt Gallery, an exhibition of 48 stunning images stimulating the curiosity and interest on bio-based applications through a collection of over 200 bio-based products in everyday’s life.

PEDAL Consulting is a partner in the Biobridges project.

The event was organized under the theme “Barriers and Solutions in the Romanian ecosystem for alternative finance”. I took place on February 25, 2020, in Bucharest, and it brought together relevant stakeholders and alternative finance providers with the goal of mapping the barriers for alternative finance, faced by the Romanian ecosystem, and find innovative ways of developing alternative financing (AF).

Alternative financing (AF) for businesses across Europe has increased considerably in recent years, becoming an important source of finance for entrepreneurs, startups, and SMEs. However, access to AF varies considerably across Europe with Southern, Central and Eastern European regions lagging behind Northern and Western European regions in terms of AF volume (total and per capita). To bridge this gap, Altfinator will facilitate the transfer of best practices from more advanced to less advanced markets.
PEDAL Consulting partners in this project.

Several cases of successful crowdfunding campaigns were introduced by Ronald Kleverlaan, Managing Director of CrowdfundingHub. It was concluded that, compared to other alternative finance instruments (like Venture Capital), equity crowdfunding presents additional benefits for the firm that is raising funds: it gets not only funding but customers acquisition who act as company ambassadors, and quite often successful large fund-raising companies combine venture capital with equity crowdfunding.
A visible trend in some years from now is that not only start-ups or SMEs will use crowdfunding but also large corporates with strong financial capabilities, like Phillips and other big firms have already done for launching new products, since main crowdfunding platforms have a large international community of investors and enable a detailed market research on new products, based on the support raised in the crowdfunding platform.
Citizens will progressively coinvest (through crowdfunding platforms) with governments in societal challenges like energy transition, social housing, food provision, etc. If you get citizens investing through crowdfunding at the beginning of a social project, then it is easier to get to start such a social project without waiting too long for external investors.
The number of new independent “trusted advisors” that support companies and recommend them to use crowdfunding instruments will increase.
The way to overcome the lack of knowledge about alternative finance among entrepreneurs and SMEs, to change their reasoning and make them think about using crowdfunding instruments goes through education; it is a continuous process that has to be done by governments, by the crowdfunding industry, also showing success cases, and by trusted SME financialadvisors/accountants, business advisors, provided that they are also educated/trained on these alternative finance solutions.
PEDAL is a partner on the AltFinator project.

Industry 4.0 relates to “the use in industrial production of recent, and often interconnected, digital technologies that enable new and more efficient processes, and which in some cases yield new goods and services. The associated technologies are many, from developments in machine learning and data science, which permit increasingly autonomous and intelligent systems, to low-cost sensors which underpin the IoT, to new control devices that make second-generation industrial robotics possible” (OECD, 2017). Digitalization has become an important driving force for society. ICT and IOTs, Robotics, Data-driven production, Cybersecurity and, Artificial Intelligence (AI) are all contributing to re-build the industrial sector and its position within the society, proposing new challenges the role and the relevance of people and the society, such as:

How digital technologies and Industry 4.0 impacts within social, economic and environmental sustainability?
How to balance digital resources and humanity into a smart factory?
What are the issues of the Industry 4.0 related to cybersecurity?
Discuss these topics and many other during our February’s forum that is taking place on the 24 at 14h30 CET HERE.

Pedal is a partner in the HubIT project.