Customer story

ExpandFibre R&D programme and ecosystem provide new bioproducts with lower carbon footprint

"Spinverse has been a valuable partner in brainstorming the operational model and strategy of such a novel ecosystem organization with us, working effectively in the timely limited schedule."

Heli Virkki, Senior Manager, Bio2X Product portfolio, Fortum.

Customer story in numbers

50

Million €

4

Yrs

2

Partners

Funding instrument

Business Finland Veturi for leading companies

ExpandFibre is an R&D collaboration and an Ecosystem launched by Fortum and Metsä Group to accelerate the development of sustainable bioproducts. It focuses on upgrading pulp fibres, hemicellulose and lignin from renewable and sustainable sources of straw and northern wood into new bioproducts. Its ambition is to meet the growing demands for sustainable textile fibres and other added value biomaterials.

Key challenges

The project aims to provide selected markets with new, high-volume bioproducts that have a significantly lower carbon footprint compared to similar (but fossil-based) products available today.

How we reached the goals

Spinverse supported in planning and preparing the winning R&D programme proposal in the Business Finland challenge for leading companies. Spinverse experts also facilitated the setting up of the ecosystem and programmes. An ecosystem requires constant work to keep it going and growing. It needs to be built and planned carefully, including defining a clear strategy and an efficient operational model. Once the ecosystem is up and running after the initial start-up phase, it is important to maintain the momentum with the ecosystem members. This means constantly planting the seeds for new joint activities and collaboration opportunities, reviewing the joint achievements against the set strategic targets, and ensuring that the value proposition to the members is delivered.

Key takeaways

The project aims to develop ground-breaking technologies and smart business concepts required to convert straw and wood pulp fibre into novel bioproducts such as textile fibres, biocomposites, packaging materials and other new fibre products.

Next

Leaf-inspired nanocellulose frameworks for next generation photosynthetic cell factories

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Kaisu Leppänen

Director and Team Leader for Bioeconomy, M.Sc. (Chem.)

+358 44 288 4824

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The decision on the equity granted by the European Innovation Council is very important to us and it helps us get other investors involved in financing the project. Spinverse helped us a lot during the application process. Their guidance and support were really needed — thank you Spinverse.

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By far, Spinverse is the best funding expert we have worked with. The effort and engagement we got during the funding application process was excellent and we are very happy with the result.

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In large pan-European projects like ours that connect several multidisciplinary groups, it is important to have an experienced and reliable partner such as Spinverse. During an EU grant proposal preparation, there are numerous technical details where a scientist or a physician is totally out of their comfort zone. We really appreciated the timely help and encouragement from the Spinverse team to reach our goal.

Mari Kanerva

Chief Physician, Helsinki University Hospital

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With Spinverse taking care of the daily administration of this large consortium, I can focus on coaching the partners to achieve tangible results via the building blocks and their integration as part of pilots!

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Kenneth Widell

Project Manager, Wärtsilä

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So far we have not been disappointed by Spinbase in any way. We were able to use it to connect Europe to our focus areas and ambitions. Spinbase has become a part of the process in finding context, opportunities and partners. It has been very helpful.

Jochem Cooiman

Innovation Officer, Municipality of Rotterdam

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Spinverse team brings to the collaboration key capabilities in ecosystem leadership, but also wide expertise on polymer technology, bio and circular economy, which are important assets in our partnership.

Jari Lehtinen

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We were impressed by the broad expertise of the Spinverse team. Spinverse did not only demonstrate strong expertise on the technicalities of the funding application, but also provided support on the financial aspects and processes.

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Spinverse gave us indispensable insights regarding necessary project information on the call requirements for the Horizon Europe. The application required a lot of information which was expected but not necessary explicitly mentioned. With Spinverse expertise, we were successful in securing this EU funding worth 16 M€ for the project and were able to build this consortium to produce more sustainable binders in the future.

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