The coupons can be used to assess the feasibility of innovative bio-based processes at the Bio Base Europe pilot plant in Ghent, Belgium. So far, the Bio Base NWE partnership has granted fifteen innovation coupons to smaller SME’s to validate bio-based ideas. Bio Base is now going to raise the value of the coupon to 30,000 euros in order to assist larger SME’s looking for process validation and to shorten the time-to-market for bio-based innovations in general.
Bio Base NWE is a three-year and 6.2 million project launched by the European Commission in 2013 to support the development of the bio-based economy in North West Europe (NWE). The Bio Base NWE partnership includes organisations from five different countries and works mainly with small and medium businesses (SME’s) to help facilitate innovation and business development in bio-based technologies.
One of the tools of the partnership is financial support by way of Innovation Coupons.
Initially, these coupons represented a value of 10,000 euros each for work undertaken at the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant, an independent, flexible, state-of–the-art demonstration facility in Ghent, Belgium, to demonstrate innovative bio-based technologies. The impact of the coupons on SME’s has been very positive so far.
“The Innovation Coupon which Celtic Renewables received, enabled the company to achieve the smooth transition of its innovative process technology to the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant, and the commencement of scale-up trials of the technology” said Marc Simmers, CEO of Celtic Renewables, an Edinburgh-based bio-butanol company. “The expected successful outcome of these trials will allow Celtic Renewables to accelerate the commercialisation of the innovation, and to move towards the full-scale industrial deployment across Europe.”
Rudi Dieleman, CEO of Dutch company Pectcof, added that the initiative is not just about the funding but also about the technical support. Scaling up a project is unpredictable, largely because a process that works well in a lab can behave completely differently on a larger production scale. The Innovation Coupon gave Pectof access to valuable scale-up skills and expertise at Bio Base Europe, thereby helping the company to achieve a commercially viable industrial process.
Analysis of the coupon system has since revealed that 10,000 euros is too small a figure to allow many SME’s to effectively interact with the scheme which as a consequence was not helping to stimulate the bioeconomy as intended.
“The SMEs requesting a coupon are all micro-SMEs of 10 employees or less, using the coupon for an idea-validation of a process that is still far from being market-ready” said Lieve Hoflack, Manager of the Bio Base NWE project. “Larger SMEs are typically more interested in more expensive process-validation as idea-validations are done in-house.”
Increasing the value of the coupon improves the attractiveness of the scheme for larger SME’s, as early collaboration with experienced personnel in a flexible facility with a wide range of process equipment can substantially reduce costs, risks and development time. This in turn reinforces the chances of successful market entry. SME’s can apply for an Innovation Coupon until June 2015 via an easy to use application procedure with assistance provided by local Bio-Innovation agents.
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