Pro-Enrich will develop a flexible biorefinery approach capable of processing a range of agricultural residues (rapeseed meal, olives, tomatoes and citrus fruits) in response to the increasing global demand for alternative sources of protein and phenolic product streams, tailored to the cross sectoral requirements of industry. Pro-Enrich will optimise existing biomass fractionation technologies and validate novel extraction approaches beyond the current state of the art (from TRL2 through to TRL 4/5) to isolate and purify proteins, polyphenols, dietary fibres and pigments. The products being targeted are food ingredients, pet food, cosmetics and adhesives. These will be developed through an iterative process of feedstock mapping, laboratory process development, functionality/performance testing of samples by industry and pilot upscaling. Pro-Enrich gathers the expertise of 16 partners from 7 countries, covering the entire biorefinery value chain and consisting of 8 SMEs, 5 large enterprises, 2 RTOs and 1 university. The project facilitates supply chain building across different sectors, including biomass production and logistics; materials handling and processing, through to end-users. The project will engage and collaborate with key industry stakeholders from farming and biomass supply, processors and brand name owners. Pro-Enrich produces detailed life-cycle, socio-economic and safety assessments to facilitate policy and decision-making by industry and the EU, inform and guide consumer acceptance and assist with regulatory compliance. The outcome of Pro-Enrich will have a huge economical impact on the involved partners especially the industries and generate a large number of new job positions. However, the impact goes beyond the consortium by contributing to the BBI’s strategy for zero-waste processing in the biobased products sector, by addressing technical, commercial and environmental impact across the whole supply chain.

The Danish EEN will provide skilled Innovation Management Capacity Building personnel to provide two services: Key Account Management Services to SMEs in the SME Instrument and Innovation Management Capacity Building services to potential high growth SMEs. A total of minimum 20 service packages will be implemented. Two tools will be used to carry out these tasks - Growthmapper for the KAM role, to provide a brief and simple feedback on the company's management ability and IMP3rove for all IMCB cases, to provide a thorough picture of the innovation management capacity of the SMEs. Companies in the IMBC work will be integrated with the wider Danish and European innovation support eco-system.

On average, each European citizen produces approximately 200 kg of municipal biowaste per year, representing between 118 and 138 million tonnes of biowaste annually arising in the EU. The main municipal biowaste management systems currently existing in Europe represent one-way flow systems in which materials and resources are underused, limiting its potential recovery into high-value products. VALUEWASTE proposes an integrated approach in urban biowaste upcycling for the production of high-value biobased products, developing the first complete solution to fully valorise biowaste that can be replicated across Europe. We will implement three new value chains that will use urban biowaste as raw material for its valorisation into high-value end products in a cascading process, generating economic, social and environmental benefits: food & feed proteins and other ingredients, and biobased fertiliser. VALUEWASTE will be developed at two very different European locations, Murcia (ES) and Kalundborg (DK) with the purpose of finding a solution both technical and socially adapted to the different socio-economic contexts exiting across Europe. Social initiatives will be created to increase consumer awareness and acceptance of urban biowaste-derived products. End-user products applications and new market opportunities will be demonstrated. Outcomes of the project will contribute to new standardisation, and will be useful information for EU policy makers in terms of waste management and in the adoption of new policies.

The recent EC decision to rely on a “Seal of Excellence” to recognize Horizon 2020 proposals with outstanding (but non-funded) projects, caused significant constrains for national agencies responsible for managing Structural Funds. To address this issue, we propose a “Peer learning on ways to enhance good practices in SME innovation support using the “Seal of Excellence” (PEER FOR EXCELLENCE)”. PEER FOR EXCELLENCE aims to produce a Design Options Paper for the implementation of financing mechanisms (public and/or private), that will help all European, national and regional funding agencies to harness the potential of the distinction provided by the “Seal of Excellence” to successfully fund high impact innovation projects. PEER FOR EXCELLENCE will be based in the sharing of experiences and practices analysis supported by the twinning advanced methodology. This will allow the leveraging and systematization of the knowledge, not only of the members of the consortium, but also of all of the relevant European process stakeholders. This work will be supported by an initial assessment of existing practices in European countries, and will compare them with the ones adopted by the national/regional authorities in each of the participating countries. This comparison will be made based on both the explicit and the tacit knowledge that exists in the participating organisations, thus enabling a process of peer learning among them (and with other interested parties that have similar challenges). The submitting organizations have a relevant stake in the national/regional funding mechanisms in their country, where they also play a significant role as host organizations of the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), supporting several SMEs that were already distinguished with the “Seal of Excellence”. This enables privileged first-hand knowledge of both parties perspective (funding entities and SMEs) on this subject.

The current exploitation of the aquatic resources is hampered by inefficiency as up to 70 % end up as low-value products or waste, which is unsustainable considering the rising populations. In order to utilise this currently poorly exploited biomass for higher value purposes, provision of proper logistics and infrastructure to ensure high quality of side-streams for a prolonged window of time is essential. Also promising technologies currently available at lab level need to be adapted to industrial scale and integrated into a biorefinery approach. The objective of the WASEABI project is to solve challenges that prevents more sound exploitation of the aquatic resources. This will be obtained by developing, sorting technologies, storage solutions and decision tools that will secure an efficient, sustainable supply system for by-catches, as well as for solid and liquid side-streams from aquaculture, fisheries and the aquatic processing industries to biorefining operations. This will result in valorisation of these raw materials into marketable products. By addressing side-streams from six different raw materials emerging from typical aquaculture, fisheries and aquatic processing industries in Europe, WASEABI will take a whole chain perspective to succeed with high quality production of: i) bioactive peptides for nutraceutical, food and feed applications, ii) protein-based food ingredients, iii) savoury ingredients and mineral supplements for food and feed. WASEABI will also construct biorefining approaches and validate selected solutions in pilot scale at the premises of participating companies. The commercial potential of the produced ingredients will be evaluated and specific environmental, economic and social impacts of the proposed solutions will be quantified. Several of the developed technologies will be transferable across seafood companies. WASEABI addresses all the objectives described for BBI 2018. SO1.R1.