We want to achieve a stronger cooperation between the between the biotechnology sector and the agri-food industry.
The BIOTECH4FOOD project aims to facilitate investment & innovation in new value chains between biotechnologies and the agro-food industry, thanks to interregional cooperation. The objectives are to make the agri-food industry more sustainable, with more circular efficient use of biomass resources, better adapted to consumer demands, and more responsive to nutrition, protein requirements, responding to nutrition, protein and health challenges for a sustainable agri-food system. system.
Our objectives are...
The EU food and drink industry, as one of the largest manufacturing industries in the EU, is facing challenges to become even more efficient in their production process. The agri-food sector has to deal with the complexity of raw materials, being biological products, often showing large (seasonal) variations, and that are being transformed into a wide range of high-quality end products with a complex composition. This production process is influenced by various factors and the final product not only needs to be of high quality, tasty and competitive but also – and foremost – has to be safe for human consumption. Additional challenges include fast changing consumer demands, increasing quality demands, a wider product variety, a constant pressure on costs and changes and interruptions in global value chains, due to an increase in failed harvests, impact of sanitary crisis, geopolitical conflicts, etc.
Within this challenging environment it is of paramount importance for the EU agri-food companies to maintain and/or strengthen their local and international competitive position in global value chains and to be able to respond, in a flexible and efficient way, to fast changing consumer demands and the protein shift, and in addition focus on the sustainability, digital and increased circularity of their processing system.
Biotechnology, as one of the Key Enabling Technologies, can drive and increase innovation in the agri-food industry to address these challenges and support the agri-food companies in becoming more sustainable and resilient.
Biotechnology, often abbreviated to biotech, is the area of biology that uses living processes, organisms or systems to manufacture products or technology intended to improve the quality of human life. Today, the branches into which modern biotechnology is divided help us fight hunger and disease, produce more safely, cleanly and efficiently, reduce our ecological footprint and save energy.
By bringing together and actively involving the ecosystems of the agri-food industry (mostly SMEs) and the biotechnology sector and by facilitating a co-creative process, research results can be implemented and valorised, and in the end lead to practical applications, new value chains, business and investments in the agri-food industry. In this way the Biotech4Food project will contribute to the development of a sustainable and resilient European food system as foreseen in the Green Deal and Farm to Fork Strategy.
Actual challenges
Regulatory and legislative barriers
Competition with more traditional ingredients, products and processes.
Financing needs
Access to specific knowledge and expertise
Within the Biotech4Food project the agri-food SMEs will be supported to set-up interregional innovation investments at the nexus between biotechnology and the agrifood industry, on the road towards commercialisation and scale-up of their business. There is a clear need for broad advisory and financial support that will provide the SMEs the tools to overcome the barriers and hurdles outlined above.
The Biotech4Food consortium finds its origin in the existing Thematic Smart Specialisation Partnership ‘Ingredients for a
Circular Economy’ (I4CE Partnership). The structure, framework and strategy described in the scoping note of the I4CE
Partnership and the discussions and meetings preceding the development of this document, form the basis and starting
point for the current proposal.
