A kick-off meeting took place on 13 June at Hervás in the Extremadura region of Spain for the Sustainext project. This is the first flagship project to be funded by the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU) and aims “to revolutionise the botanical extracts industry with a unique model that can then be replicated by the European bio-based industry”.

UK green technology firm Bio-Sep and the Innovation Centre for Applied Sustainable Technologies (iCAST) have begun a joint project to develop renewable, biosourced alternatives to petrochemically derived platform chemicals. They will work together to test the properties and performance of Bio-Sep’s products in composites and as a cement admixture.

The EU-funded Urbiofin project has stated that it is ready to demonstrate innovative processes in bioethanol production from the organic fraction of municipal solid waste and its use in chemical building blocks, proving the techno-economic and environmental viability of an integrated biorefinery.