Realise-Bio shares key recommendations for action to realise the bioeconomy

Last week, the final webinar of our Interreg Germany-Netherlands project Realise-Bio took place. The experts from the consortium presented interested participants from the German-Dutch border region and beyond with the central recommendations for action to realise bioeconomic innovations.

In eight different subject areas, the project was able to collect challenges, questions, and solutions from the nine funded model projects and the extended network that had been established.

Patrick Lemmens (LLTB) spoke in the field of raw materials about the importance of direct cooperation between primary producers and processors on an equal footing, which distributes risks and responsibility fairly.

Katrin Kriebs (CLIB) emphasised the importance of early planning in process design and the consideration of the entire production including all the necessary resources in order to identify hurdles at an early stage.

Peter Stoffels (CLIB) presented the recommendations on the topic of the market and consumers and spoke, among other things, about the fact that sustainability alone is not enough, but that functionality is often a more important factor in the market.

Holger Beckmann (GEMIT at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences) emphasised in the two topics worked on by GEMIT that the evaluation of the economic viability of an innovation is not a one-off, but an iterative process and that the use of biomass as a raw material poses special challenges for logistics , which can be answered with data-based optimisation processes and reverse logistics, among other things.

Yvonne van der Velden (Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo) presented the topic financing and talked about how public funding, tax breaks, or access to capital can promote the bioeconomy. For regulatory and legislative purposes, it is particularly relevant to accelerate innovation and create fair conditions for growth.

Ali Ghannadzadeh (AMIBM) presented his findings on life cycle analysis (LCA) and explained why conventional static LCA methods cannot adequately map the different temporal dynamics of bio-based products.

Afterwards, Chris Baumhöer and Jonas Finkeldei from eudemia shared their most important findings for the realisation of their innovation. eudemia has developed a bio-based and compostable furniture system together with SAM Panels in a model project. They emphasised that early planning of process flows, including the recyclability of the product, is important, while not losing the necessary flexibility to be able to react to changes. The early involvement of the market has also been a decisive success factor on their path so far.

 

We would like to thank all participants, speakers and the Realise-Bio consortium for this successful final webinar. The detailed recommendations for action will be published in April 2026 and will then be available for download free of charge at www.realise-bio.com.