Long gone are the days when the big enterprises of the early capitalism used to rule from within the innovation processes, from basic research to the marketing of new products. Nowadays such innovation processes are governed by large, complex and structured production chains, with various economic and non-economic actors, often with a local connotation, influencing their characteristics and results. An interest in clusters is not merely linked to their economic potential but also to their value as a planning tool by public intervention on the environment.

With the term bioeconomy – meant as an economy using biological resources as input for food, feed, energy and industrial production – we refer to a metasector worth 2 trillion euro in Europe, creating 22 million jobs, representing 9% of the overall workforce, according to the data released by the European Union. This implies that clusters with an interest in bioeconomy can include agriculture and food industry, green chemistry and industrial biotechnologies.

The only European cluster directly inspired by bioeconomy is Central Germany’s Bioeconomy Cluster (http://www.bioeconomy.de) based in Halle (Saxony-Anhalt), where a variety of partners in the industrial and research fields work towards the use of non-food biomasses for energy and new materials production. In the Saxon city, timber, chemical, plastic material and plant-engineering industries team up to build a dedicated regional centre for bioeconomy where the common objective is to expand rapidly from local workshops to industrial production.

In October 2012, German Chancellor Angela Merkel inaugurated the Fraunhofer Centre for Chemical-Biotechnological Processes CBP in Leuna, an innovative core of the Bioeconomy Cluster. At the biorefinery centre – unrivalled in Europe – processes are developed through a combination of chemical and biotechnological methods to allow extraction of basic chemical products from biomass for possible industrial use. It took twenty months and an investment of 53 million euro to open this cutting-edge centre, available to both universities and industries. “CBP is a milestone in the way towards the future of bioeconomy” claimed Chancellor Merkel on that occasion. She also believes that the Leuna Centre is “an excellent example of redevelopment of East Germany”.

The fact that Germany means business in bioeconomy and that part of its growth strategy is based on clusters is shown by the prominent role played by Cluster Industrielle Biotechnologie (CLIB 2021, http://www.clib2021.de), of North Rhine-Westphalia, which combines German excellence in the field of research and development, production and marketing in all sectors of bioeconomy. 

Clib2021 was born in 2007, when the agglomerate of the North Rhine-Westphalia state won the public procurement by the Ministry for Federal Research and Innovation, being awarded 20 million euro in public funds. In April 2009, the CLIB-Graduate Cluster was created, a joint initiative of three universities within the cluster: Tu Dortmund, Bielefeld and Heinrich Heine of Düsseldorf.

Germany’s great manufacturing is heavily present: Altana, Basf, Henkel, Evonik, Lanxess and Bayer. In addition, there are over forty SMEs, universities and high-calibre research centres such as Fraunhofer, associations, banks and venture capital (since research must be funded). Clusters also include foreign members such as the A.N. Bach Institute of Biochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, with which since 2010 the CLIB has started a coordination programme of scientific projects in the field of biotechnology or the Belgian Bio base Pilot Plan. The international nature of the cluster appears from the strong international relations that over the years have reached agreements with Brazil, Canada and Malaysia. The cluster is an independent entity, requiring stakes by its members according to their ability-to-pay principle and able to create a turnover.

German clusters are part of a strategy (“Bioeconomy 2030”) coordinated by the Federal Ministry of Research and Innovation outlining the national approach resulting in a post-oil economy, thanks to the use of renewable resources and biomasses. It also created a Federal Bioeconomy Council, an institution whose task is to come up with proposals to submit to the central government. Manufacturing and academia have to build strategic alliances along the whole production chain of bioeconomy in order to receive federal funds.

“Bioeconomy 2030” and the creation of the Federal Bioeconomy Council have had a significant impact on the European debate, speeding up the launch of the Union strategy “Innovation for growth – A Bioeconomy for Europe” in February 2012.

From Germany to France it is a short step. To single out the most representative cluster of the French bioeconomy one needs to head for Picardy. It is the point of convergence of world competitiveness of Industries and Agriculture Resources best known as IAR Pole (http://www.iar-pole.com), specialized in green chemistry and industrial biotechnologies: almost 200 active members, not just from Picardy but also from the Champagne-Ardenne Region, working together for an economy based on the use of renewable sources. It is the French industrial sector at its best: Michelin, Roquette, Veolia, Faurecia, Total but also L’Oreal, Danone and Lacoste, just to mention a few.

Near Reims, the capital of Champagne-Ardenne, the IAR Centre houses the European Institute of Biorefinery, one of the biggest in the world. Every year it transforms 3 million tons of biomass (beetroot, wheat, lucerne) into sugar, glucose, starch, nutritional alcohol, surgical spirit, ethanol and active ingredients for cosmetics. The French cluster is characterized by the principles of sharing and synergy: the Centre in Reims also includes a shared R&D lab (ARD), an industrial demonstration plant (Biodemo) and a research centre that links several colleges of further education (CEBB). In Reims a new project is also being developed, Futurol, for the production of second-generation biofuels that do not use biomass from crops. 

While the main characteristic of the IAR Centre is synergy, the second is internationalization. The French cluster is not limited to regional scale but boasts partnerships with Europe, Canada, USA, Japan, Brazil and India. In the Old Continent, it is actively collaborating – together with the York University’s Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence – to the creation of a biorefinery intercluster. The French bioeconomy panorama also includes Axelera (http://www.axelera.org), a Chemistry and Environment cluster of Lyon & Rhône-Alpes Region specialized in green chemistry and recycling of materials; Agrimip, Agri Sud-Ouest Innovation (http://www.agrisudouest.com), a cluster for agriculture and the agricultural and food industry of the Aquitaine and Midi-Pyrénées Regions; and Xylofutur (http://www.xylofutur.fr) a cluster focused on paper of the Aquitaine Region. In march 2011, these clusters together with the IAR Centre created the United Bioeconomy Clusters (UBC), an association aiming at sharing a national strategic development vision focused on green chemistry and presenting French bioeconomy in a unified way abroad.

Recently, in Italy as well, a series of clusters devoted to bioeconomy have been created. Once again, this highlights the importance of teaming up when dealing with the challenges posed by the development of this metasector. The creation and development of eight national technological clusters was promoted in 2012 by the Ministry of Education, University and Research with the aim to identify opportunities – clusters organized by companies, universities, private or public research institutions and individuals focused on innovation and active in different national areas – able to act as catalysts of sustainable economic growth both at local and national level.

The most important is surely the national green chemistry technological Cluster created by three of the major players in the Italian bioeconomy: Novamont, Versalis (Gruppo ENI) and Biochemtex (MossiGhisolfi Group), in collaboration with Federchimica, the Italian Federation of Chemical Industry.

The Crescentino Biorefinery owned by MossiGhisolfi Group, the first plant for the production of second-generation biofuels in the world.

The goal of the green chemistry cluster, which adopted the acronym SPRING – Sustainable Processes and Resources for Innovation and National Growth (http://www.clusterspring.it), is to promote the development of bioindustries in Italy through an integrated innovation approach to relaunch Italian chemical industry characterized by environmental, social and economic sustainability and to stimulate research and investment in new technologies. The goal is to boost national and international competitiveness in the field of biobased products and to pursue EU’s most recent guidance on bioeconomy.

SPRING has over one hundred members operating on different levels in bioeconomy and representing Italian excellence in this field: big industrial players, biotech SMEs, universities, research centres, institutions, regional innovation centres and many others promoting innovation and technological transfer.

The actions of the Cluster, which has appointed Catia Bastioli (Novamont’s managing director and true leader of the Made-in-Italy bioeconomy) as its president, are characterized in the short and long run by four main pillars: the promotion of a cascading use of biomass closely connected with agriculture and local biodiversity; the development of innovative technologies and efficient processes for the creation of integrated, third-generation biorefineries; the market-driven development of biobased products and devising green public procurement and bioeconomy incentive actions both at regional and national level.

“Agriculture meets chemistry” is the slogan chosen by Biobased Delta (http://www.biobaseddelta.nl), a bioeconomy cluster in the Southwest of the Netherlands, to highlight the importance of agricultural residues for biobased industrial innovation. For chemistry in particular, since the Dutch cluster is part of a bigger chemical one created by Antwerp, Rotterdam and Ruhr Regions.

Biobased Delta is home to Biorizon, a shared research centre (in partnership with Ghent Bio Base Europe Centre of Education to Bioeconomy) specialized in the development of technologies for the production of aromatic compounds from renewable sources to be used in high-performance materials, chemical products and coating. Its aim is ambitious: in the coming years to be one of the three main world players in this kind of research. To this end it has pursued and intensive activity of international partnerships, from Brazil to Canada. In January 2014 a memorandum of understanding was also signed in Reims, at the headquarters of the IAR centre, by Willem Sederel, CEO of Biobased Delta, and by President François Hollande, to promote the use of Biorizon by the French manufacturing sector.

Besides, other initiatives of the Dutch cluster include a green chemistry Campus, a startup accelerator for renewable-sources-use innovation. In the headquarters of Sabic Innovative Plastics (a company controlled by the Saudi petrochemical colossus Sabic) in Bergen op Zoom, small and big businesses, research centres, universities and government institutions work closely in an open innovation environment to develop strictly biobased technologies able to exploit agricultural and food residue flows.

In a nutshell, from North to South, the European approach to bioeconomy is based on clusters that become the real driving force behind development and innovation, a tool able to promote a partnership between different actors and the rapid exchange of knowledge. Experts claim that all this generates a competitive environment that creates favourable opportunities for new businesses and new jobs. 

Interview with Horst Mosler, CEO of BCM – Bioeconomy Cluster Management GmbH, the company that manages the cluster for the bioeconomy based Halle, Germany