BIC's Trend Report 2024-2025 highlights the importance of biomanufacturing for Europe's future
Europe is facing a major transition towards a more sustainable industry. According to the Trend Report 2024-2025 of the Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC), biomanufacturing can play a key role in this transition. Biomanufacturing uses biological feedstock to produce materials and chemicals and can be a powerful alternative to fossil production methods.
Why Biofabrication is Essential
The report states that Europe's strategic autonomy and sustainability can be greatly improved by investing in biomanufacturing. Dirk Carrez, Executive Director of BIC, stresses the importance of bridging the gap between innovation and market introduction. This means investing in scaling up, clear legislation and an industrial policy that stimulates the biobased sector.
In March 2024, the European Commission published a strategy entitled Boosting Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing in the EU. BIC calls for these plans to be translated into concrete policy measures. This could be done, for example, through the EU Biotech Act and the Clean Industrial Deal, in which biomanufacturing is included as a spearhead.
Challenges and opportunities
The report also identifies a number of bottlenecks that are slowing down the growth of biomanufacturing. One of the main obstacles is the current regulatory environment, which is still largely focused on traditional fossil industries. This makes it difficult to implement sustainable biobased alternatives on a large scale.
BIC advocates an 'EU defossilisation accelerator', an initiative that harmonises legislation and regulations and stimulates investments. In addition, the availability of sustainable biomass is a point of attention. Clear guidelines for sustainable harvesting and use of biomass are needed, so that production remains in line with circular economy goals and the food first principle.
Successful examples
Several companies demonstrate how biomanufacturing contributes to a more sustainable industry in practice. For example, L'Oréal works with the Sustainable Product Optimisation Tool, which the company uses to make its production chain more sustainable. Braskem uses sugar cane to produce bioplastics that can replace fossil plastics. In Estonia, the SWEETWOODS project converts wood biomass into high-quality bioproducts in an innovative way, using no less than 90% of the biomass. Artificial intelligence is also playing an increasingly important role in biomanufacturing. AI can help to organise production processes more efficiently and offers opportunities for new circular business models.
BIC's call: a coherent policy needed
The report concludes that Europe needs a clear long-term strategy to make biomanufacturing a success. This means more investment, a better regulatory framework and a strategic approach to the use of renewable raw materials.
International cooperation plays an important role in this. Europe can learn from the United States, where biomanufacturing is already higher on the agenda, and from the recent G20 agreements on the bioeconomy.
Dirk Carrez sums it up as follows:
“Biomanufacturing offers enormous economic opportunities and can play a vital role in reducing CO₂ emissions and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. But to harness this potential, we need to invest in the right regulation and market conditions now.”
The full BIC Trend Report 2024-2025 can be downloaded from the Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC) website.
Source: BIC and agro-chemie.nl
