Insights

MetGen's CTO, Matti Heikkilä, and Laura Koponen, Managing Director of Spinverse were on Finnish national tv, Huomenta Suomi, discussing the grand vision: wood to replace oil. In practice wood will be used to produced products, which are currently made from oil, starting with packaging materials. Moreover, the SWEETWOODS project, a consortium of nice European companies,  has received 21M€  of EU-funding with the aim of producing wood-based biomaterials for the first time on an industrial scale. These wood-based materials can be used to replace plastic in various everyday applications.

SWEETWOODS is a 43-million-euro joint pilot project that was recently granted 21 million euros in funding under the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme’s Bio-Based Industries financial instrument. Horizon 2020 is the biggest research and innovation programme in the world, supporting the development and introduction of new technologies. SWEETWOODS represented the only flagship project in the bioeconomy sector. The project is implemented through collaborative efforts of nine partner companies.

Talouselämä - a Finnish language weekly financial and business magazine - has just published a multi-page article (in Finnish) covering recent developments on the Kaidi Finland's biorefinery large scale investment project.

The European Commission has decided to grant EUR 88,5 million of NER 300 investment subsidies for the biofuel refinery planned by Kaidi in Ajos, Kemi. NER 300 is one of the world's largest funding programmes for innovative low-carbon energy demonstration projects. The application was prepared by Spinverse.

Finnish politician, former chairman of the Swedish People's Party and the former Minister of Defence of Finland Carl Haglund to accelerate Kaidi Group’s growth in Europe in the rank of Vice President.

Following the universal tendency, the European Union is striving to achieve ambitious energy and climate targets by 2020, including 10% requirement of renewable fuels in the transport sector. In many of those energy conservation measures and in terms of efficiency of energy use, Finland numbers among the leading countries in the world. Finland relies heavily on the energy efficiency as the source of most of the country’s cleantech business value.