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GreenWin, the chemical engineering and sustainable materials cluster

An interview with Ms Véronique GRAFF, Managing Director of the GreenWin innovation cluster

What are the key figures for GreenWin? With nearly 200 members including over 150 businesses, the cluster has given its label to 42 projects for a budget of €110M. GreenWin has been the coordinator of 2 European projects and is a partner in 2 others. GreenWin is split up into 9 Strategic Activity Areas covering the chemistry, construction and environmental technology sectors. GreenWin is the leader of 2 intercluster research themes: the circular economy and carbon neutrality. Moreover, the cluster has launched 2 technological platforms (PEPIT, dedicated to the circularity of plastics and CONNECT) and is a member of 5 international networks. It has also concluded 4 international partnerships (not forgetting the 800 contacts of its international network) and an interregional partnership with Flanders and Brussels. Thanks to its activities, GreenWin stands at the heart of a network of businesses with a job growth rate of +20% and an added value growth rate of +40%.

Could you present GreenWin’s industrial sectors to us? They represent 85,000 direct jobs (26% from industrial employment) and 160,000+ indirect jobs, plus €1.6 billion in R&D expenditure (60% of expenditure on private R&D) and €15 billion in exports (36% of Walloon exports). Between 2007 and 2017, the 880 business members of the cluster (more than 90% of which are SMEs) created +13,000 jobs (FTE). In 2016, the businesses in the cluster represented 53% of the “industry” reference system in terms of jobs (FTE). The reference system is made up of the manufacturing industry, the construction sector (10%) and the logistics transport sector. This percentage was 45% in 2007. In addition, employment (FTE) has risen by 13%, i.e. by 17% more than the evolution of employment in the reference system. Lastly, the added value increased by €4.1 billion (+ 59%), i.e. an increase of 45% more than the evolution of added value in the reference system (14%).

Could you talk to us about the cluster’s strategic activity areas and themes? GreenWin is organised into 3 main areas of activity: chemistry, construction materials and environmental technologies. In addition, the cluster deploys in 9 strategic activity areas concerning the following sectors: green chemistry, the transformation of CO 2 (CCU), biotechnologies, sustainable materials, energy storage and efficiency, construction systems, recycling, soils and sediments, sewage and sludge, air and sediments. Two transversal areas (the circular and digital economy) are added to this. These various activities have openings in three application sectors: chemistry, construction and environment. © J. Donjean

Could you talk to us about your members and the services that you offer them? GreenWin members, above all a network of SMEs, large businesses, universities and colleges of higher education, Approved Research Centres (CRAs) and training centres… are among the best performing in their field and produce the most impressive results. The cluster’s businesses generate job growth of between 20 and 40%. Lastly, the cluster is made up of a network whose individual members are highly inspirational: we call them GreenWinners.

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What partnerships have you developed? 130 innovation partnerships have been developed in our strategic sectors. We work tirelessly on “interoperability” with other clusters, in particular in the field of the circularity of polymer production. We have signed last year an interregional Memorandum of Understanding with our Flemish alter ego Catalisti, and this agreement has itself generated an agreement between the Walloon, Flemish and Brussels administrations to facilitate putting interregional projects together, whatever the size of the consortium partners. This is an historic first in Belgium. The goal is to allow for smoother innovation opportunities and to stimulate the creation of direct and indirect jobs within the interregional projects. International partnerships are at the core of GreenWin's business

Could you give us a few examples of projects bearing the cluster’s label in R&D and training? We have several success stories of which we are very proud, and here is a selection.

ATISOL C2C develops new solutions for building insulation by combining three advantages: use of circular materials whose energy performances are more efficient and that are easier to implement. The project is led by DERBIGUM (Imperbel) and made up of partnerships between manufacturers of insulation materials, coatings, adhesive materials, an architecture consultancy, a university and several CRAs.

MEDIX focuses on micropollutants in effluents from the hospital and pharmaceutical sector, with some success. This project led by JOHN COCKERILL Group brings together a company active in sewage treatment and one active in ecodesign, hospitals, cutting edge expertise that is the result of European projects involving some Universities and CRAs.

For its part, GreenTechs is a training course aimed at production and laboratory technicians in chemistry and sustainable materials production. Its objective is to place skilled people on the job market in sectors with a shortage of candidates, prepared for the necessary changes in industrial apparatus, with a concern for the environment and safety. It is a matter of meeting needs for qualified jobs in green chemistry. At least 80% of trainees have returned to direct employment after the training course. CEFOCHIM was the project leader.

What do the Walloon projects WaloSCRAP and BATILOOP consist of? These two projects are linked to the identification of deposits of recyclable materials in Wallonia which combine several characteristics: ± A challenge for industries given the volumes concerned; ± The characteristics that allow for the deployment of a “self-carrying” business model; ± Their capacity to generate activities and income.

BATILOOP and WaloSCRAP have made it possible to build innovation partnerships in the field of recycling for plaster, flat glass, automotive glass etc. Via WaloSCRAP we deal with many sectors such as the plastics sector via the implementation of PEPIT – Polymers Ecocircularity Platform for an Industrial Transition. © GreenWin

PEPIT is a platform of partners, a group of technologies, skills, equipment and a network of experts. The platform’s goal is to accelerate innovations in industry based on three technological lines: mechanical recycling, chemical recycling and biotechnologies. It is created and acts with a view to the integration of these lines into a circular economy so as to allow for the circularity of plastic materials.

It has a threefold objective: ± making an integrated technological network accessible to industries for the performance of specific tests and analyses, in particular with a view to reducing the risks linked to the launching of innovation projects; ± ensuring the rapid start-up of concrete projects - via the pooling of skills and equipment and a direct connection between the research players and industry; ± accelerating the bringing to market of competitive industrialisable solutions, by allowing industries in Wallonia to access a regional skills pool via a platform that groups together several Approved Walloon Research Centres working in partnership on project guidance and feasibility.

Could you tell us about the LCiP project? How do you rate it as regards the Walloon SMEs involved? LCiP (Life Cycle in Practice) is a European project, which the cluster has been a partner. Its goal was to make life cycle analysis (LCA) accessible to SMEs. 8 Belgian SMEs have played the game and benefited as pioneers from customised tools as well as being able to take strategic decisions to adapt their business model to the LCA principles. These are businesses such as PREFER, MOBIC, PCIM, ISOHEMP, RUBBERGREEN, PUR VER, BIOWASTE RECYCLING and PAN-TERRE. In addition, the cluster has put in place a resource centre articulated around 3 of our members: CSTC, MATERIA NOVA and ULiège-PEPS. It is consequently perfectly possible for any interested SME to contact the cluster in order to access the services of this resource centre.

Another European project for which we have been a coordinator is remarkable for its pioneering status and high involvement: SCOT, the number 1 European initiative in the field of capturing and using CO 2 , which has generated and promoted the notion of carbon neutrality and/or carbon circularity.

Recyclable materials stocks categorisation has led GreenWin to the circular economy expertise

© GreenWin

This project brought to the table clusters and universities from France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and defined the European strategic agenda in this regard. And for the continuation of this project, GreenWin has been commissioned to establish a lasting European structure carried by industry in a number of different sectors: CO 2 Value Europe. SPIRE, a PublicPrivate Partnership between industries and the European Commission, has for that matter integrated the lessons from SCOT into its strategy and in its priority areas. This is also the case for the BBI JU (Joint Undertaking).

What calls for projects are planned for 2020 on the cluster’s themes? Three calls for projects will be organised with the projects to be submitted in March, June and December 2020 respectively. They always follow the same procedure: starting with handing

Construction is one of GreenWin’s 3 major sectors

in a letter of intent and holding an orientation meeting with the cluster’s operational team, and ending with a validation of the file with the GreenWin technical-economic panel of experts. After that comes the submission of the full project to the Walloon Government which will then decide which of the projects will be retained for the label. Lastly the completion of the consortium agreement will open up the path to the grant agreement and project start-up.

In addition, our partnerships with the innovation clusters of Belgium and other territories will make it possible to open collaborations and consortia with businesses and other bodies from these regions and countries. We can therefore extend our schedule of calls for projects to those for Flanders (via Catalisti), France (via Axelera), Quebec (via CRIBIQ) and Italy (via SPRING).

What activities are you developing internationally? Other than those deployed within the framework of cluster projects (130 members are active in GreenWin projects), we are also developing strategic structural partnerships with clusters, with the two most recent being those with Catalisti in Flanders and SPRING in Italy. This allows us to extend the project potentialities and consortia well beyond the geographic limits of Belgium.

Construction is a major sector for environement improvement

© GreenWin

In addition, our partnership with the EU’s BIC networks for European projects in the area of bio-based technologies represent other sources of cooperation, expansion and international promotion.

What are the main challenges that have to be overcome in the next few years by players in sustainable chemistry, materials, sustainable construction and environmental technologies? The challenges in our fields of action are in truth cross-disciplinary but our areas of activity are at the heart of the solutions to be developed and deployed to overcome them on a broader stage, that of society.

Chemistry is faced with a threefold challenge: ± The challenges linked to climate change; ± Vulnerability of access to resources; ± Access to energy.

Limitation to access to resources and impacts of climate change will lead to the emergence of tensions and geopolitical pressures from which no one is able to escape.

The very nature of our planet is circular and finite, and the increasing rarity of resources will pose problems. Green chemistry will therefore be a crucial key to reduce these pressures and risks of tensions. Construction for its part is faced with a twofold challenge: ±In the very short term, the digital tidal wave that is washing over the links of the production chain and its impact on the creation of new jobs, all the contours of which it is currently impossible to fully imagine, as well as on employment in this sector with the risk of crisis that this implies; ±The calling into question of business models and flexibility, which will increasingly be key factors in the industrial prosperity of the Belgian construction sector.

There is also a need to take waste management into consideration, both at industry and consumer level. In this respect, “cradle-tocradle” is increasingly imposing itself as the solution but it implies the changing of the entire sector of recycling which needs to become a partner and not an adversary of “zero waste” by agreeing to call into question its mode and type of functioning according to Lavoisier’s universal principle which retains its full force today: nothing is lost, nothing is being created, everything is being transformed…

Green chemistry, the guarantee of a better future and a sustainable world

© GreenWin