Sprind GmbH. (6/29/23). "Press Release: 40 Million Euro to Develop New Bioprocessing Technologies". Leipzig.

	Region	Germany
	Organisation	Sprind GmbH (Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen)
	Group	Germany (govt)
	Product	business development (state/region)
	Product 2	industrial biotechnology
	Person	Costard, Jano (Germany (govt) 202306 Challenge Officer at SPRIND)
	Person 2	Egle, Christian (Germany (govt) 202306 Press Officer at SPRIND)

40 MILLION EURO TO DEVELOP NEW BIOPROCESSING TECHNOLOGIES IN ORDER TO INTEGRATE WASTE STREAM VALORIZATION THROUGH BIOMANUFACTURING CONCEPTS WITH CONVENTIONAL MANUFACTURING

The German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation is announcing the SPRIND Challenge ‘Circular Biomanufacturing’. In this three-year innovation competition, up to eight teams will be funded to develop novel bioprocessing techniques that valorize raw materials from waste streams and integrate the output of the biomanufacturing processes into conventional manufacturing practices.

Today our production is based almost entirely on using newly mined raw materials or resources. The extraction and processing of new raw materials and resources continues to be an enormous burden on the environment and society. A transition to a circular economy that manufactures new products with existing raw materials and resources facilitates more sustainable and resilient manufacturing. A key role in making this state possible is biomanufacturing because these manufacturing processes use comparably less energy and is less labor intensive, while converting waste streams into valued feedstock.

Recent scientific advances have led to new insights and methods which have significantly improved biomanufacturing processes and identified novel possibilities to employ biomanufacturing techniques more effectively. Although some biomanufacturing technologies have demonstrated their value in niche markets, the challenge still remains to scale biomanufacturing capabilities to industrial scale and integrate these into existing manufacturing processes, in order to replace or augment costly and labor intensive petrochemical manufacturing.

“Using the SPRIND Challenge vehicle, this specific Challenge, entitled Circular Biomanufacturing, we will seek to develop an end-to-end prototype, which consumes valorized waste streams under continuous fermentation conditions to produce intermediary or final materials,” explains Dr. Jano Costard, Challenge Officer at SPRIND. “The goal is to establish novel biomanufacturing processes that utilize locally available (secondary) raw materials and are closed, sustainable, environmentally friendly system and resilient to market fluctuations.”

SPRIND is calling upon talented teams to submit their innovative ideas on how to advance biomanufacturing technologies to reach the goal of the Challenge. An expert panel will down select up to eight teams for the first round of financing. The teams will be supported by SPRIND, receive expert consultation and will be connected with a broad network of subject matter experts.

For this SPRIND Challenge, which starts on November 1, 2023, 40 Mio. Euros will be made available to support the three-year competition. Teams will be evaluated each year to determine which teams will be eligible to receive the following year of funding.

The submission deadline for this SPRIND Challenge is September 17th , 2023. More information can be found at https://www.sprind.org/en/challenges/biomanufacturing

About SPRIND

The Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, SPRIND, was created on December 16th , 2019 and is headquartered in Leipzig, Germany. The sole proprietor of SPRIND is the German Federal government, represented by the Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK). SPRIND fills a gap in the German innovation ecosystem: it discovers novel, disruptive technologies to address the greatest challenges of our time. SPRIND also ensures that the value provided by developing radically new technologies remains within Germany and Europe. SPRIND is financially supported with funding made available through the Federal budget. SPRIND is led by Rafael Laguna de la Vera and Berit Dannenberg.

CONTACT

Christian Egle
Press Officer
christian.egle@sprind.org
Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen SPRIND
Lagerhofstr. 4
04103 Leipzig

Record changed: 2023-07-04