Insights

The European Maritime and Fisheries Fund supported the sustainable development of the blue economy SMEs across the European Union with an overall budget of 22,5 M€ in its 2019 call for proposals. The BlueInvest Fund addressed the challenge of developing and bringing to market new products, services, and business models for early-stage businesses, SMEs and scale-ups. The next BlueInvest call 2020 with a budget of 20 M€ is planned to be published later this autumn with a deadline in mid-January 2021. Is your company ready to tackle the new opportunities enabled by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund? Find out how Spinverse can help you get ready for the upcoming funding opportunity!

Avantium N.V. with nine partners across Europe were awarded with a € 13 million grant from Horizon2020's SPIRE programme. The project will integrate and scale up Avantium's new biorefinery process Dawn and novel catalytic process for bio-based MEG (mono ethylene glycol) Mekong. Avantium, with 6 M€ share of the grant leads the consortium called IMPRESS. Spinverse assisted Avantium and the consortium in preparing the winning application.

Research and development used to be more of an in-house activity within companies, but organisations today understand the value of joining forces in innovation processes and forming ecosystems around them.

From Aalto the program will be led by Prof. Orlando Rojas & Dr. Maryam Borghei, in Biobased Colloids and Materials group (BicMat) from the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems (Bio2).

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.

Vesa Varjonen, Vice President of Research and Technology at Planmeca and Matti Heikkilä, CTO of MetGen have been chosen as CTOs of the Year 2018.  The jury consisting of leading Finnish technology influencers emphasized the significant role of the awarded CTOS on renewal of the industry. The CTO of the Year Awards are given by Spinverse together with Technology Industries of Finland and Business Finland to highlight the importance of Chief Technology Officers work on the future competitiveness of Finnish industries. 

Temperature sensors, drug tests and disease detection devices made out of paper: the future of green electronics has kicked-off  with the INNPAPER project. The four-year project aims to develop alternative solutions to traditional electronics. It is funded by the European Commission and has a budget of €7.5 million.

Kauppalehti - a leading Finnish language commerce-oriented newspaper - had just covered major development of one of the Spinverse's clients - Norsepower Oy Ltd. The company announced its agreement to install a rotor sail solution onboard of a Viking Line’s cruise ferry. This deal heralds the world’s first liquefied natural gas/wind electric propulsion hybrid passenger traffic ship.

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.