Small and medium-sized enterprises - an important key to bioeconomy growth in northern Sweden

The workshop brought together participants from industry, academia, and business to foster collaboration and advance bio-based solutions in Sweden’s bioeconomy sector.

The participants discussed MainstreamBIO’s goals followed by presentations from the SMEs Erika Almgren Stenberg, Vallakokerskan, Abiodun Yusuf Ojoola, Win Win Avfall and Thomas Storsjö from BioCompost, who shared how MainstreamBIO’s support has been pivotal in addressing bioeconomy challenges and important for further development of their companies. All the companies are linked to the MainstreamBIO project as a part of the open call and receiving innovation support.

-We are very pleased with the day and the topics that was covered, both on project level and the inspirational and insightful discussions. Experience exchange is crucial for the growth of the bioeconomy in Europe. Events such as this one are a great way to bring competence together, identify opportunities to strengthen our collaboration across borders and drive collective progress towards a greener future, says Beatriz Deltoro, innovation consultant at Innovarum, Spain.

A workshop on factors to strengthening SME’s active in the bioeconomy of northern Sweden was held by the Biomodel4Regions’ project, were groups discussed around a barriers and possibilities of their northern location. A common barrier among the SMEs was the distance to market while it was highlighted a strength the strong engagement between industry, academia and incubators.

"These identified barriers and threats seen among start-ups and SMEs are important for us to learn so we can propose countermeasure. Another interesting point brought up during discussion today was the lack of funding available for start-ups transitioning upward in scale, caught in no-mans land of lack of scale-up funding to get clients and in the need of clients to get scale-up funding", says Eleonora Borén, project manager RISE.

The day ended with an interesting visit to Ciniz Fertiliser AB's new plant in Örnsköldsvik. The Swedish environmental technology company produces the environmentally friendly mineral fertiliser calcium sulphate (SOP) by recycling industrial residues from battery manufacturing and recycling, the pulp industry and other industries. The company's scale-up journey has involved several steps. Initially, Cinis Fertiliser focused on laboratory and pilot-scale production to prove the feasibility of the technology. As the demand for sustainable fertilisers grew, they moved to commercial scale by building larger production facilities and this year opened their first, in Köpmanholmen near Örnsköldsvik.

Read more about the project MainstreamBIO here

Read more about the project BioMOdel4Regions here