Insights

An important gateway to the global market for the smart city offering developed within the LuxTurrim5G ecosystem will be opened at the Expo 2020 Dubai, launching in October. In the event, the LuxTurrim5G concept and two functional smart poles will be showcased together with Nokia and Tehomet, Orbis, Teleste, Vaisala, Indagon, L7 Drive, Link Design, VTT and Spinverse. Spinverse has been part of the ecosystem since its very start, taking care of the ecosystem leadership and project coordination.   

In spring 2021, a national company-led hydrogen cluster was established in Finland to accelerate hydrogen economy and exports of hydrogen-related solutions. To date, the cluster has attracted almost 50 companies already, including Spinverse, which will provide services for building project consortia, raising funding and coordinating projects. The cluster aims to open up doors to European networks as there are plans to invest tens of billions of euros to hydrogen economy. The cluster has now published its website.

Patria Land is leading a defence industry consortium that has now been selected as part of the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP), an industrial programme of the EU. As part of the EDIDP, the program focuses on Ground Combat Capabilities (GCC) to develop the next generation armoured platforms and upgrade the current ones. Patria Land acts as the industrial coordinator of the EDIDP-GCC-2020 and has formed a consortium called FAMOUS (European Future Highly Mobile Augmented Armoured Systems) to execute the program. The consortium includes 19 leading European defence companies from different countries. Spinverse supported the planning and preparation of the winning FAMOUS project proposal and will help Patria Land to coordinate the project.

EDIDP is a defence industry development program designed to support the competitiveness and innovation capacity of the Union's defence industry. The EDIDP is the first EU-funded program to develop defence capabilities, with a financial envelope of 500 million euros. The selection for the EDIDP program was made in June 2021 and the actual start of the project will take place in autumn 2021. The GCC project led by Patria will last 24 months.

A new project with 30 participants from eight European countries will pave the way for an emerging new European business and technology ecosystem aimed at tackling various energy-related challenges for the future of mobility. The project accelerates Europe's decarbonization goals for 2050. The project consortium and proposal were built with the help of Spinverse.

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.

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.

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.

Mirka is seeking new innovative solutions for dust control and measurement in different working environments. The freshly launched Mirka Innovation Challenge, arranged in collaboration with Spinverse,  invites new ideas and ready solutions for dust level measurement, to join Mirka’s decades of experience in dust-free sanding. 

Fortum and Metsä Group launched ExpandFibre, a 4-year R&D collaboration, in summer 2020. It is a major effort towards developing high-volume bioproducts that have a significantly lower carbon footprint compared to currently available fossil-based products. To succeed in the ambitious mission, the founding companies have joined forces with a large and continuously growing group of innovation partners – the ExpandFibre Ecosystem. Spinverse has supported the ecosystem in setting up the ExpandFibre activities and is working with Fortum and Metsä Group to accelerate impactful collaboration.