BIOECONOMY / RESEARCH & INNOVATION / NENU2PHAR PROJECT

HIGHLIGHTS

Launch of a new Bio Based Industry Joint Undertaking (BBI-JU) project, NENU2PHAR aiming at setting-up an innovative European value chain of PHA-based bio-plastic products from a sustainable resource with an acceptable end of life.

• NENU2PHAR – For a sustainable and European value chain of PHA-based materials for high-volume consumer products
• €5 million European grant of private-public partnership “Bio-Based Industry Joint Undertaking”– 6,4€ million of total budget.

NENU2PHAR brings together 16 European partners and was successfully launched online, on September 15, 2020.

CONTEXT and OBJECTIVES

Plastics represent an important part of the global economy: its production has surged over the 50 years, from 15 million tonnes in 1964 to 359 million tonnes in 2018, and it is expected to grow. The plastics industry is a key contributor to European society. The plastics industry gives over 1.5million of direct employment in Europe, with close to 60,000 companies that generated a turnover close to 350 billion euros in 2016 and a trade balance close to 15 billion euros (PlasticsEurope).

The plastic industry is currently facing two major challenges. Currently, still, 90% of global plastic produced is derived from virgin fossil feedstock giving the plastic industry a poor environmental footprint. Moreover, the plastic industry suffers from a rather negative image linked the unsustainable end of life management practices, such as incineration and persistent and increasingly visible environmental impacts.

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are a group of biopolymers that are now widely recognised as attractive substitutes to fossil fuel-derived plastics in a wide range of applications. They are renewable, biodegradable and bio-based polymers, in the form of polyesters. They are considered as one of the green polymers groups of the future. Unfortunately, no sustainable value chain exists in Europe, and production schemes developed elsewhere in the world appear highly questionable from an environmental and ethical standpoint.

In this context, over the next 3 years, the NENU2PHAR project will develop an original route of production PHA (Polyhydroxyalkanoate) from sustainable and renewable resources: micro-algae biomass and selection of bacteria strains. 8 PHA-based products with their respective end-of-life scenarios will be developed and benchmarked to their fossil-based counterparts. To overarching this ambitious goal, NENU2PHAR has six specific objectives :

• Develop competitive PHAs polymers bio-sourced, sustainable both from an environmental and economic perspective
• Formulate and functionalise polymer for masterbatch and compounding development
• Identify processes of PHA-material to reach defined functional properties of bioplastic better than fossil-fuel counterparts
• Develop eco-designed PHA-biobased products
• Demonstrate the circular economy and sustainability of the NENU2PHAR value chain
• Increase stakeholders and consumer awareness of new bio-plastic product for better acceptance and compliance to market

A MULTI-STAKEHOLDER PROJECT

NENU2PHAR brings together 16 European partners, coordinated by CEA (France):

• 4 large industrials: DANONE (France), KAJ PLASTICS (Poland), SOFRADIM PRODUCTION (France), IFG EXELTO (Belgium)
• 6 SMEs: ELIXANCE (France), CELABOR (Belgium), BIO-MI Ltd (Croatia), BIOTREND (Portugal), LOMARTOV S.L. Applied Innovation Engineering (Spain), ZERO EMISSIONS ENGINEERING B.V. (The Netherlands)
• 4 RTOs: CEA (France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission), Innovation Plasturgie Composites (France), ITENE (Spain), CENTEXBEL (Belgium)
• 1 academic: Université de Bretagne Sud – Institut de recherche Dupuy de Lôme (France)
• 1 innovative cluster: IAR, the French Bioeconomy Cluster (France)

Duration: 42 months (September 2020 – Mars 2024) | Total budget: € 6 395 081.2

NENU2PHAR has received € 4 983 169.87 funding from the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 887474. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the Bio Based Industries Consortium.

For more information, please refer to the European Commission website:

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/887474/fr