The Exilva flagship project will consist in the upscaling of the Borregaard’s MFC process from the existing pilot plant (50-70 tons/year) to the full scale flagship plant (1000 tons/year) and demonstrate an industrial symbiosis between the biomass/forest industry (Norwegian Spruce) and application industries in a wide range of market segments by developing and commercialising added value (performances vs cost) products in a sustainable way. The ambition of the Exilva project is to make MFC commercially available on large quantities for the first time as well as develop the MFC market further in selected segments. The grand challenges of the Exilva flagship project are twofold: • Technology and process: related to the start-up of the flagship plant the main tasks and challenges will be testing of the new equipment, technology transfer from the pilot plant to the flagship plant, gaining operational experience, establishing the plant organization and quality control, establishing the appropriate process parameters for a stable full scale production of MFC and gaining experience with regards to logistics and handling of the MFC material. • Market: successful market penetration of MFC based products, product performance and cost, standards and regulation. The decision to invest in a first of a kind commercial plant is driven by business opportunities to use MFC in a wide range of market segments and applications and demonstrate that the investment in the flagship will be profitable. Borregaard has started to establish business pipelines towards different end user companies that will develop full products based on MFC formulations.

Our SynoProtein project aims to develop, mature and demonstrate a novel carbon-negative process that enables high value creation from sawmill by-products through carbon capture and use (CCU). The consortium has developed an innovative process for the vertical integration of by-products from sawmill industry, i.e. feedstocks comprising only residues (no sawlogs), and conversion into fish feed ingredients, i.e. single cell protein (SCP), along with the production of biochar for animal feed. Thus, our process can provide novel, sustainable protein sources, as opposed to conventional energy- and climate-intensive soybean and resource-limited wild fish protein production routes to meet future demands. SynoProtein will demonstrate that 1.25 tons (t) of CO2-e can be captured from syngas via CCU for each dry-ton sawmill by-products processed. This clearly makes our SynoProtein innovation unique and is why it will introduce a green paradigm shift for the recycling and commercialisation of low-value by-products feedstocks into high-value bio-products. This project joins together a balanced consortium of 11 partners, covering the whole SynoProtein value chain, from industry, academia, and research institutes, which spread to 4 different European countries (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany), but with worldwide operation with their sister companies. Overall, we expect carbon capture of 200kt of CO2-e from syngas annually with our process by 2033, recovering 160kt/year of forest residues and producing 120kt/year of fish/animal feed for industry, valued at €175m. This also represents 260 jobs created in EU and reduced 120kt per year imported feed ingredient from other continents. Compared to fish feed production from soybeans, our SynoProtein is also expected to save carbon emission of 458kt CO2-e, land use of 147km2, and water use of 630,700m3 by 2033. It fits strongly with the mission of the CBE JU “advancing a competitive bioeconomy for a sustainable future”.

Uptake of advanced robotics and automation in the Agri-Food sector, specifically in meat processing, has been stifled due to the perceived high cost as well as the lack of flexibility, robustness and scalability to suit different volumes, smaller in particular. This conflicts with recommendations that governments across Europe should encourage greater food system efficiency and security. Pioneers in Norway (NMBU/Animalia) and Denmark (DTI) have been working to address this issue and have created a new automation concept for the meat sector: the Meat Factory Cell (MFC). The MFC today is simple, relying upon the intelligence of human experts to complete complex tasks. However, meat processing plants are amongst the lowest quality working environments in Europe, making autonomy a must. RoBUTCHER aims to develop a cognitive MFC, capable of autonomy. To achieve this, RoBUTCHER has the following underpinning objectives: (1) Assessment of social, legislative and best practise meat industry requirements; (2) Development of novel technology modules for autonomous cutting trajectory planning, and integration with cooperative human–robot interfaces; (3) Creation of enabling intelligent tools to evaluate the system, chiefly for cutting and handling; and (4) Industrial scale pilot of the cognitive MFC. Core robotic technologies are integral to RoBUTCHER, where the main emphasis is AI and Cognition, but natural overlap exists to include Cooperative Human-Robot Interfaces and Cognitive Mechatronics. Today there are no suitable “off-the-shelf” solutions. The ambition for RoBUTCHER is to develop a system to TRL6, using existing MFC infrastructure within the Consortium as a catalyst for research and innovation. Successful delivery of the project will provide the robustness, flexibility and scalability that small and medium meat processors require to lower the technical barriers they face in adopting robotic automation, which would improve job quality and food security in Europe.

Brown algae, particularly L. hyperborea, represent a largely untapped renewable resource in Europe, present in huge volumes along the coastlines of Norway (approximately 60% of global biomass), Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland, and France. L. hyperborea contains alginate, cellulose, functional polysaccharides like fucoidan and laminarin, phlorotannin’s (polyphenols), as well as protein, vitamins, and minerals, all ingredients in demand in Europe’s biobased value chains. However, current harvesting techniques, particularly widespread use of formaldehyde, is limiting the huge valorisation potential of this promising renewable feedstock. Once brown kelp is exposed to air, chemical and enzymatic reactions quickly begin to rot the harvest. Currently, harvesters mitigate this by treating brown kelp with formaldehyde during and after harvesting. However, formaldehyde causes undesirable browning of some compounds and is toxic, so must be removed through expensive, energy and water intensive washing prior to further processing. This makes valorisation of all but the most valuable alginate fraction (~15% of L. hyperborea biomass) uneconomic; consequently, about 85% of the residual brown kelp biomass is flushed back into the sea unused. PROTEUS addresses the challenge of maximising valorisation of Europe’s L. hyperborea biomass through the optimisation of ALGINOR’s (coordinator) and HYPOMAR’s formaldehyde-free harvesting and extraction technologies and approaches. This will enable large-scale valorisation of Europe’s considerable L. hyperborea resource and conversion of 100% of the biomass into ingredients that will be tested in validated for use by ESSITY (personal-care), OLMIX (feed), VAESS (food), and BORREGAARD (industrial applications) as drop-in replacements for synthetic materials in sustainable biobased product lines.

Trust in science and technology as well as the utility and acceptability of their innovative outcomes is crucially dependent on the ethical qualities of the research. This is the reason why research projects are submitted to an ethical review. Although the existing ethics review infrastructure includes experienced members with expertise in traditional research, this is not the case for new technologies and transformative research that result in new human rights, such as digital rights. Thus, there is a clear need for ethics committees to evolve in order to cover this gap and to be able to support innovation while embedding new human rights. CHANGER aims to promote changes in research ethics reviews that strengthen the capacities of researchers to incorporate ethical judgements in the project design and implementation, and to support ethics committees to address new challenges posed by new technologies and new research practices. CHANGER will review current practices and ethics criteria, will identify and discuss new challenges emerging from new technologies and from new research practices, which are not sufficiently covered in the current review process, will provide innovative training to ethics review experts and researchers, and propose innovative approaches and tools to ethics review reform and new understandings to practice ethics by design, supported by guidelines and a policy roadmap. The CHANGER interdisciplinary consortium has extensive and long-standing experience-based expertise in research ethics reviews, integrity oversight and human rights and is capable of providing novel solutions to the needs in ethics reviews.