On October 19, the French – Dutch workshop Biobased Materials took place at the residence of the Dutch ambassador in Paris. The aim of this workshop was to share and compare the status of biobased materials developments in France and the Netherlands, together with experts from the government, companies, clusters and knowledge institutions. The workshop was organized by the Dutch cluster Circular Biobased Delta, the French cluster Bioeconomy for Change (B4C), ChemistryNL, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate and the Dutch embassy in Paris.
The day started with an insight into the bio-raw material position of both countries, by examining the availability of bio-based raw materials and the policy for the production and use of sustainable biomass. Subsequently, the R&D developments for biobased chemicals and biomaterials in both countries were presented and possible areas for collaboration were identified. A panel discussion between leading companies in this field (Corbion, TotalCorbion, Avantium, Afyren, Global Bioenergies and Plantics) discussed the successes and the barriers to scaling up. The day concluded by looking at current practices to boost the bioeconomy in both countries, using cluster organizations, scale-up facilities and sharing the major investment programs in this area in both countries.
The conclusions and next steps will be shared soon.
