Insights

The European Union has proposed to set up ten new European Partnerships with total investments of almost 10 B€ for the green and digital transition. Their goal is to accelerate the transition towards a green, climate neutral and digital Europe and increase the resilience and competitiveness of European industry. In addition to funding research initiatives, the partnerships will also fund industrial investments for pilots, demonstrations and first-of-their-kind flagships.

The European Association of Innovation Consultants published its first collective report to help European Commission in their work to inform the industries on the deployment of Next Generation EU funding instrument, the largest economic stimulus ever funded by the EU. As one of the founding members of EAIC, Spinverse has also contributed to this report, called "A Guide to Next Generation EU for industry to better understand and seize its opportunities".

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.

Horizon Europe, the landmark research programme for the years 2021-2027, has finally launched with the official opening of its first collaborative calls. The budget of 95.5 B€ for the next seven years will offer strong support for projects related to topics such as health, digitalisation and green transition. Innovative small and mid-sized enterprises will also be able to benefit from the various funding opportunities under the programme.

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.

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.