Bioeconomy - Build Back Better

What is the bioeconomy?

The bioeconomy is one of the EU’s largest and most important sectors encompassing agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food, bio-energy and bio-based products with an annual turnover of around €2 trillion and employing around 18 million people. The sector is expected to play an important role in Europe’s long-term goal to develop a competitive, resource efficient and low carbon economy by 2050.

The bioeconomy’s cross-cutting nature offers a unique opportunity to address inter-connected challenges in a resource limited world, pushing industries and people to seek new ways of producing and consuming. This can be in part be achieved by using the production of renewable biological resources (agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture) and the conversion of these resources and waste streams into value added products, such as food, feed, biobased products as well as bioenergy. Bioeconomy value chains integrate the latest breakthroughs in clean technology, biotechnology and genetic engineering to extract and produce high value products from agricultural, forestry, marine and waste biomass.

Ireland’s bioeconomy

The bioeconomy is an area of strength for Cork and nationally, due to the natural resources and infrastructure available. It has the potential to support new jobs and grow Ireland’s economy while achieving green targets of reduced carbon emissions and sustainability. Government’s National Development Plan recognises that the bioeconomy is crucial for decarbonisation, sustainability and circularity while also providing an impetus to competitiveness and rural and regional development and employment. 80% of agri-food companies are in rural Ireland, thus the bioeconomy will be a key driver to stimulate rural and agricultural redevelopment.

Why does the bioeconomy matter to SMEs?

Bioeconomy Ireland Week takes place annually to highlight and raise awareness of Ireland’s rapidly growing bioeconomy across industry, local communities, producers, researchers throughout Ireland. This year’s theme is ‘Build Back Better’ - as Ireland adapts and begins to transition beyond the Covid-19 context, there is a unique opportunity for SMEs to proactively and positively update and change existing practices and ways of doing things. The bioeconomy presents new opportunities and possibilities to build a sustainable, circular new future, and gives SMEs the opportunity to identify, capture and communicate the green credentials of their organisation.

Opportunities & challenges

A report of the Bio-Éire Project funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine’s Competitive Research Programme evaluated the most promising value chain opportunities in the Irish bioeconomy. Interestingly, the report recognises the influence of consumer purchasing decisions on retailers and manufacturers. It identifies market factors, and in particular, those concerning consumer behaviour relating to bio-based products for example labelling products, raising public awareness and tax incentives for bio-based products.

Commercialisation and adoption of new bioeconomy products and their supporting technologies can be challenging due to issues such as high switching costs, quality standards and possible hesitancy of final consumers to embrace products generated from side or waste streams. however, cultivating biobased consumer strategies can enable companies to develop products and services to create the new generation of biobased consumers.

Growth and support for the sector

Future prospects of the sector are positive. The National Bioeconomy Campus located at Lisheen, Co. Tipperary, is a pilot scale facility for bioeconomy technologies in alliance with industry and research producing organisations. In addition, a number of institutes and organisations such as the Shannon ABC and BiOrbic, Bioeconomy SFI Research Centre are working on ways to collaborate more closely to deliver results for Irish industry, to help facilitate well-informed value chains and to help them benefit from an active bioeconomy.

Carbery Group are partners in Biorefinery Glas, a European Innovation Partnership (EIP) Operational Group funded by Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine under the Rural Development Programme 2014-2020. The project demonstrates the versatility of grass as a raw material. A mobile grass refinery can process two tonnes of fresh grass per hour and aims to increase the usable protein from grass by 40%. The cattle eating this generate less greenhouse gas emissions than if they were eating untreated grass. The grass proteins can be turned into valuable materials and make up to five by-products that could give farmers new sources of income. One such product is concentrate feed for animals that can replace imported feeds, another small step towards carbon neutrality, by reducing emissions. Biorefinery Glas is a first step towards changing the role of farmers in the bioeconomy, from suppliers of biomass to producers of finished and semi-finished products. The project also demonstrates and evaluates an innovative business model for farm diversification into the circular economy.

Numerous EU programmes are funding research into this area, such as the MPowerBIO project aimed at helping clusters and SMEs with the challenges they face regarding investments. The ICT-BIOChAIN project is identifying ways to use ICT effectively (IoT and Industry 4.0 solutions) to increase the efficiency of biomass supply chains for the biobased industry.

Through the translation of research into real world applications, and through promoting collaboration between research institutions and industry, it is possible to find tailored solutions to maximise and diversify existing value chains. Supporting SMEs and large industries to identify and scale opportunities is key to Ireland’s fast-growing bioeconomy.

Find out more

The Enterprise Europe Network is hosting a bioeconomy webinar, supported by the Chamber’s Sustainable Cork programme, go to https://chamber.corkchamber.ie/events/catgid/1014 for further details.

The webinar is targeted at SMEs who wish to learn more about the shift towards bioeconomy and potential opportunities to participate in the bioeconomy value chain. Speakers will communicate the benefits of bio-based products across the value chain for producers, distributors, users, consumers, NGOs and public authorities.

SMEs & Bioeconomy Building Back Better

Register online now to hear more about the following:

• Current national and EU developments

• Opportunities across multiple sectors (agrifood, pharma, marine, health)

• Examples of bio-economy solutions for SMEs which drive competitive advantage and consumer demand

• how to get involved in Enterprise Europe Network initiatives, including international networking, B2B meetings and partnership requests