PRIMARY aims to develop and pilot local solutions for the production of food, feed, bio-based materials, bioenergy, and fertilizers by valorizing agricultural biomass feedstocks, including grass, greenhouse and cotton by-products, and olive tree pruning that are currently underutilized and exist in substantial amounts in Europe. The project focuses on North-East Europe (Finland) and South-East Europe (Greece), providing business models and demonstrations in rural areas where pilot and demo plants are rare. PRIMARY works with primary producers and local actors, and pilots six process concepts: 1) separation of protein and fibre rich fractions from grass to produce food/feed and biobased materials, respectively; 2) submerged and 3) solid-state fermentation processes to upcycle the feedstocks to protein rich food and feed ingredients; 4) fibre forming technology to enable production of packaging and construction materials; 5) pelletizing process to solid biofuel for gasification to bioenergy from olive-tree pruning and cotton byproducts; 6) pyrolysis of cotton and olive byproducts to biochar for fertilizer and material applications. The solutions piloted in the project are selected based on cascading use of the feedstocks to find the highest possible value, considering the regional conditions. Sustainability of the new value chains is broadly assessed. To maximise project outcomes and impact, other partners and regions are engaged through an open innovation call to promote the ecosystem for valorizing agricultural biomass, and to show replicability of the project solutions. PRIMARY outcomes, including new processes, products and service concepts, will be communicated via various channels, including a stakeholder platform, to ensure wide exploitation of the solutions. A multi-actor approach is used in the development of processes and replicable business models, and for delivering guidance to farmers and SMEs, and advice to policymakers at national and EU level.

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).

TREASoURcE will innovatively circulate currently incinerated, exported, landfilled or dumped plastic and biobased side and waste streams by deploying systemic circular economy (CE) solutions. The systemic CE solutions will integrate the two main elements of TREASoURcE: stakeholder engagement demonstrations (SE-DEMOs) and key value chain demonstrations (KVC-DEMOs). The DEMOs support chosen territory clusters in introducing CE practices to their citizens and businesses to help 1) decouple from use of fossil virgin resources and excess raw material consumption, 2) increase resilience (self-sufficiency, value chain security, environment and nature), 3) decrease GHG emissions and contribute to achieve climate neutral economies. Climate change, environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity are major global threats that require urgent collaborative actions across industry, sectors, cities and regions, communities and citizens. Half of total GHG emissions and more than 90 % of biodiversity loss come from resource extraction and processing. Global consumption of materials, especially biomass, fossil fuels, metals and minerals are expected to double by 2060 and annual waste generation is estimated to increase by 70 % by 2050. TREASoURcE focuses on demonstrating the CE solutions in cities and regions located in the Nordics (Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark), and they will be replicated in the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Poland and Germany (of the Baltic Sea Region). The combination of the cities and regions will enable large reach and bigger impact and boost the replicability and scalability potential of the CE solutions. A common issue of the regions’ material circulation is low and decentralised material volumes and resulting challenges in feasibility, and bottlenecks have been high risk investments due challenges in securing sufficient feedstock (quality and quantity). However, regional strengths lie in ambitious climate and environmental targets.

WelFarmers will set up eight national innovation networks and four Europe-wide networks of pig farmers, advisors, veterinarians and researchers to address the challenges of the upcoming change in the European pig welfare legislation. WelFarmers will address four main topics: cage ban; keeping pigs with uncovered tails; avoiding pain during castration and space and flooring. The most urgent innovation needs and challenges will be identified in a bottom up way and the network will collect and evaluate good practices that meet these needs. WelFarmers will also strive to collaborate with existing and new EIP-AGRI operational groups (OGs) and EU research projects focused on pig welfare and to enhance their impact. The selected best practices will be disseminated through a series of communication and dissemination activities to reach most pig farmers in the eight participating countries and in Europe. EIP abstracts, thematic reports videos, brochures, e-news, national workshops, transnational cross-fertilisation events and a multilingual website are some of the dissemination methods planned to communicate and disseminate the best practices.