BRANCHES aims to increase implementation of cost-efficient new technologies mobilize more biomass and create new business opportunities in rural areas by improving and strengthening the connection between practice and science of bio-based economy through offering a channel for two-way flow of information, new ideas and technologies within European agriculture & forestry practitioners particularly in rural areas. Research in bioeconomy has accelerated during the last ten years and a vast amount of knowledge has been generated. However, due to the multiple sectors and complex value chains involved, a significant part of that valuable information is in danger to stay untapped. The BRANCHES project will summarize, share and present the existing best practices and research results from earlier and running EU and national projects to promote bioeconomy and rural development through new bio-based initiatives. The demands and needs of the practitioners will be gathered by a series of workshops and meetings and active co-operation within national networks. In BRANCHES, the selected knowledge on forest and agricultural biomass supply chains will be integrated with available and innovative technologies and best-practice cases for bioeconomy solutions with bioenergy conversion systems in wider bioeconomy context. Policy recommendations, competitive biomass supply chains and most suitable innovative technologies will be summarized and shared in easily understandable formats (Practice abstracts and factsheets) through Thematic Networks launched by BRANCHES. The cooperation within Thematic Networks is expected to lead to outcomes which will have a lasting and widespread impact on practitioners across Europe in the rural environment. The project consortium has 12 partners, and, in addition, over 30 different organizations (including companies, associations, Ministries, Councils and Federations) have express their support to the project (through support letters).

Nowadays, the center of the bio-based economy is the development of integrated value chains removing sector barriers, where market and product innovations are driven by societal needs and vision of brand owners, and require the collaborations between different sectors through new bio-based value chains (from feedstock to products), also establishing co-operations throughout industry clusters. Open innovation has been identified as the major driver to perform innovation through the flow (in and out) of knowledge, technologies and competences, for organisations to design, plan, and implement market and product innovations as well as to establish sustainable partnerships joining forces with customers, feedstock suppliers, academia, and financial sector. In BiOPEN a consortium highly specialized in the bio-based industry, composed by five European bio-based clusters, three open innovation expert companies, and one research centre, will embark on an ambitious programme to support collaboration and knowledge sharing in the bio-based industry, stimulating the set-up of co-innovation partnerships for the development of new products and markets in the sector. BIOPEN ambition is to become a single voice for the bio-based industries in Europe, gathering expertise and promoting engagement and involvement of industry, researchers and academia at European and national level, by setting up an Open-innovation platform addressing strategic cross-cutting challenges such as (i) clustering and networking to develop new value chains and favour the emergence of co-innovation partnerships across the value chains; (ii) Stakeholders engagement and support with regards to setting-up at least 20 co-innovation partnerships alongside existing and new value chains; (iii) creation of a knowledge centre collecting the prospective and insight of the community, and providing access to relevant information for markets and products innovations in the bio-based ecosystem.

Due to the rapid growth of population, municipal solid waste (MSW) has contributed significantly to the total amount of waste generated by our society. Today in Europe, each habitant generates, in average, 0.5 tonnes of MSW per year, increasing at an annual rate of 10%. Around 40-50% of it correspond to organic waste. This organic fraction mainly contains carbohydrates, proteins and lipids, which are all useful raw material that can be converted to valuable products. Its valorisation will help to solve environmental pollution but also contributes to the transition from a linear to a renewable circular economy. Digestion and composting have contributed to the reduction of the biodegradable fraction of MSW sent to landfill. The low economical value of compost and biogas is limiting the sustainable implementation of separate sourcing systems since increasing citizen environmental (waste) taxes is then need to tackle important logistic costs. New biobased products can help to improve waste treatment environmental and socio-economical sustainability. The aim of URBIOFIN project is to demonstrate the techno-economic and environmental viability of the conversion at semi-industrial scale (10 T/d) of the organic fraction of MSW (OFMSW) into: Chemical building blocks (bioethanol, volatile fatty acids, biogas), biopolymers (polyhydroyalkanoate and biocomposites) or additives (microalgae hydrolisated for biofertilisers). By using the biorefinery concept applied to MSW (urban biorefinery), URBIOFIN will exploit the OFMSW as feedstock to produce different valuable marketable products for different markets: agriculture, cosmetics. URBIOFIN will offer a new feasible and more sustainable scenario alternative to the current treatment of the OFMSW.