Insights

Urbaser, a global environmental management company, and their subsidiary Socamex, will lead a pan-European CIRCULAR BIOCARBON project, launched in summer 2021. The project aims to build the first biorefinery for municipal solid waste and sewage sludge in Europe. Spinverse supported Urbaser at the project proposal phase. As a result of a successful grant application, the circular biocarbon project will be partially funded by 15 M€ from Bio-based Industries (BBI) Joint Undertaking subsidy provided by the European Commission.

During 2020, Göteborg & Co and Gothenburg won the title European Capital of Smart Tourism. IMCG helped implement the programme during the year and to launch many new local, national and European collaborations – where all of them have a clear link to sustainability and digitalisation. This was to further strengthen Gothenburg's position as a smart destination – open for smart tourism.   

The collaboration within the LuxTurrim5G ecosystem, driven by Nokia and coordinated by Spinverse, has progressed nicely despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The extensive company consortium developing a digital platform for the smart city has now reached an important milestone when its key element, the 5G smart pole, has progressed from the development stage into the pre-commercial product. It is in fact a product family of smart poles, which can meet the various needs of cities. The modular structure allows for poles in different sizes, integration of various devices, and implementation of required digital services based on usage and surrounding area. The ecosystem partners are currently working on finalising the collaboration model to bring the product to markets.   

Spinverse health tech and funding experts have been supporting Helsinki University Hospital (HUS), the largest academic medical centre in Europe, in some of their publicly funded research projects and activities related to EU funding applications. We discussed with Suzan Ikävalko, Senior Research and Innovation Manager at HUS, on the importance of EU funding as means to boost innovative research projects and collaboration with other parties.

We know the warmest time of the year is not far away when our summer trainees join Spinverse to support our experts over the summer holiday season. This year, we are proud to introduce Maria Heinonen, Heidi Melkko and Joonas Paukkunen as our summer trainees. They were selected in our virtual recruitment event from more than 150 candidates.

Phenolic resins are one of the most versatile polymers yet invented. Spinverse recently supported the VIOBOND consortium to secure funding of 16 M€ from the Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU) grant. VIOBOND project with a total budget of 35 M€ is led by Latvijas Finieris, and it aims to help build a sustainable and safe flagship plant for large-scale production of lignin phenol-formaldehyde (LPF). In this project, lignin will be used to partially substitute hazardous chemicals of fossil origin.

Eurostars is a public funding instrument dedicated to innovative, research-driven small and mid-sized enterprises who want to join forces with other like-minded companies. Successful applicants are in for grants worth an average of 1-2 M€ each to boost their civilian projects aimed at developing new products, processes or services. The funding instrument stimulates international collaborative research and innovation projects that will be rapidly commercialised.   

Spinverse business continues to grow and renew to meet the customer needs and to offer top expertise on public funding, and existing or emerging technologies. As our experts accumulate more experience with Spinverse, we try to offer opportunities to take on new responsibilities. At the same time, we warmly welcome new experts to join our ranks. This spring, we have had several recruitment processes in our business units and are now proud to introduce our latest promotion and first new colleagues.

Henna Gustafsson is working as a research funding advisor at the University of Jyväskylä Research and Innovation Services in central Finland. She and her colleagues offer pre-award services to researchers and staff of the university and they have recently started to use Spinbase, which is an AI-based funding search tool developed by Spinverse. Spinbase helps Henna in her daily work to identify EU funding opportunities for the university’s researchers. The results have been very positive.

The main focus of more than 60 Spinverse experts is to innovate, ideate and challenge. This is why the company’s working environment called for inspirational spaces for innovation. Spinverse recently moved to Keilaniemi, Espoo, to larger premises and aimed to create an environment where employees can work in a variety of ways, meet colleagues and also celebrate success.