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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See our experts

Kaisu Leppänen

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

+358 44 288 4824

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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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Spinverse greatly contributed to the configuration of an excellent consortium, providing their expertise and advice in order to get a final industry-oriented team, which succeeded in the achievement of a funded BBI flagship project.

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The proposal preparation would have been difficult without Spinverse's support. Their expertise in EU project building and in setting up an international consortium was instrumental in our success.

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With the support from Spinverse, our ambitious targets will now be concretized. The special expertise from Spinverse in addressing all the critical details during the preparation phase earned us a winning proposal.

Tekla Tammelin

Research Professor at VTT

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The support we received from Spinverse in preparing our application for the EU grant was instrumental. Their consultation and insight helped us secure the funding that enabled this unique consortium to be formed.

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Co-founder and CEO of Infinited Fiber Company

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Spinverse was very open with their communication and the collaboration worked really well, guiding us towards our goal in this competitive EIC Accelerator call. The expertise of Spinverse team built a relationship of mutual trust, which I see as a very important success factor.

Stig Torud

VP Business Development, sensiBel

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Spinverse has done an efficient job in building a diverse European consortium. Their experts also coordinated the successful funding proposal and grant agreement with six different industrial use cases meeting common technology development needs.

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I have been using Spinbase when needing a fast overview of the EC-funded opportunities for a specific domain. The tool gives a comprehensive list of potential opportunities in an interface where I can easily check the contents and the critical information, as deadlines and type of instruments. It also allows me to export my selection to a table which I can use to support discussions, both internally and with VTT customers and partners.

Isabel Pinto Seppä

EC Affairs Manager, VTT International Affairs

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