On April 10-11, the POLYMEER partners gathered in Ghent, Belgium, for their first in-person meeting since the project’s kick-off.
The event was hosted by two of our Belgian partners, Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant (BBEPP) and Normec OWS.
Day 1 – Project updates and progress
The first day of the meeting took place at the BBEPP premises, starting with a general overview session by the coordinator. This was followed by a presentation of the activities carried out within WP1 by the Università di Perugia and the Universiteit Twente. WP1, one of the most active work packages to date, focuses on optimising a sustainable by design and reliable sequential process to fractionate wet BSG into fractions that are precursors to produce bio-based, co-polymers and polymer blends.
Later, the partners had the opportunity to take a very interesting facility tour at the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant, which operates from a laboratory level to a multi-tonne scale. Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant is a service provider for process development, scale-up and custom manufacturing of bio-based products and processes. It enables the conversion of renewable feedstocks into biochemicals, biomaterials, biofuels and other bioproducts by using technologies such as biomass pretreatment, biocatalysis, (gas)fermentation, green chemistry and product recovery and purification.
The afternoon was dedicated to presentations of the work carried out in the different work packages during this first phase of POLYMEER. Our partners from Sapienza Università di Roma, BBEPP, NTT, Bio-mi, Lomartov, AIMPLAS, Normec OWS, Birra Peroni, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Zabala Innovation and Gate2Growth presented their activities to the rest of the participants.
Day 2 – IPR workshop and strategic discussions
Normec OWS was the host for the second day of the POLYMEER consortium meeting. During the first part of the morning, our partners from Gate2Growth, Marius-Febi Matei and Noemi Nodari, conducted a workshop on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). This was a valuable opportunity for the partners to learn about the different types of IPR, including patents, copyrights and trademarks, and the implications that they can have on the project and their activities.
During the day, we also had a General Assembly, in which the partners discussed important topics relevant to the project and decided on the next steps that need to be taken.
Before closing the consortium meeting, we enjoyed a tour of the Normec OWS facilities. As an independent laboratory with over 35 years of experience, they have tested thousands of material samples, including packaging materials, food service ware, detergents, consumer products, and agricultural and horticultural products, among others.
Normec OWS offers consulting services in the fields of biodegradability and compostability, waste composition, waste separation, recycling, integrated waste management, and related legislation in Europe and the USA.
As the POLYMEER project advances, the first tangible results are beginning to take shape. With our mission to establish a sustainable bio-based value chain using brewer’s spent grain as feedstock, progress is being made in the development of innovative bioplastics designed for recyclability and biodegradability. These early achievements reflect the dedication and collaboration of all partners and mark an important step forward towards more sustainable solutions in agricultural films, brewery packaging and automotive textiles.
