Live from the Hotspot of BioEconomy - Plastic. Climate. Future. @ World Bio Markets (Vol 1)

You ready, Matt? I'm ready, Tom. Okay, here we go. Blast it. Blimey, man. Huge turn. Downbeat, downbeat. Not calm. Not calm, man. Hello, John. Hey, that was another one. We did it. What do you mean, Matt? And it's only the two of us, so we cannot care of anyone tonight. Yes. Because we have... We have a very special episode to record tonight. And I'll take from the word biomarkets and maybe some of you know it already that As the climate future is partnering with word biomarkets. Some of you might also have heard already the episode with Paul, one of the owners of biomarkets, who is our hero in driving the commercialization of bio economy. And we were so lucky to get invited to the Hague in the beginning of May this year. And be there on the spot with all these innovators from the field of bio economy. And tonight we will have some of these amazing people on the podcast, but recorded life at the world biomarkets. Right, Tom? Man, Matt, that sounds really good, you know. And indeed, Paul McDonald of world biomarkets. I mean, he's really a true pioneer in bringing this industry together and building it up, using his capabilities and skills. It's good to be a part of that. And yeah, I understand there was a big show in the Hague on the 10th and 11th of May that you are at that I was supposed to be with you at, but I had another commitment that I couldn't get out of. I'm looking forward to listening to the interviews that were done by you, Matt, and had a chance to hear a few of them. So I'm looking forward to this. Great, and I'm happy to have you here tonight. And yeah, why don't we just dive in right away? Here we go. I'm going to interview with Goezadair. Goezadair is from Spain. Okay. Her name is actually from the bus country. That's what she told us. Oh, wow. And she is working for, yeah, Senair Bio2C division, which is dealing with the valorization of bio-mess into all kinds of different products and sources for bio-based materials and bio-based material solutions. Well, I can't wait to hear this. You know, I have a soft spot for the Spanish and biotechnology because I set underneath a PhD guy from that part of Spain when I was doing my masters in biotechnology. So I can't wait to hear this. Here we go. So I'm here at World Biomarkets in the Hague with one of the most complicated names, I think, for someone who doesn't speak Spanish. It's Goezadair. Barberena. Ibanez. That's it. That's it. Good. Is there a short form for Goezadair? Well, you can call me Goezadair if that makes it easier. Goezadair, you came here from Spain, can you tell us just shortly what is your company doing or first the name of your company and what are you doing and then just a little bit about why are you here? Of course. This is Goezadair from Senair, Senair is the National Renovable Energy Center of Spain. We are a search institute that we are developing technologies and researching on the different renovables, but in particular, and come from the Bio2C, which is the BioRefinally and BioEnergy Center, where we are particularly going through scaling and developing technologies for the development of biomassies mainly by residues and residual biomassies into biobase products. We work at different URLs from the very early stages, from lab stages and to the piloting and demonstration scale. Although we mainly focus both on biochemical pathways, including, for example, asthmatic hydrolysis and, including, for example, fermentation in order to go and produce biobase plastics, bio stimulants, biopesticides, etc. And the second pilot is thermochemical pathways, where by means of, for example, acidification, through refaction, pyrolysis, hydro-tormal liquefaction, we are working on advanced biofuels productions, such as, for example, self-sustainable reaction biofuels, but also other chemical building blocks that are aimed to go through other bio-based products. That would be on and on what we are doing. Then I should have asked what you are not doing, probably. Yeah, and why are you here? Like, what do you expect from the event? We know that scaling up by economy requires a lot of collaboration. What are your primary goals here today? Yeah, indeed, indeed. Well, our main focus here today and tomorrow is to meet and share with the colleagues that we are meeting here on the needs that the biosector is facing right now, and mainly to those needs that scenario could provide solutions. Some of them would be on the rear stages, in the kind of microorganisms, etc. But also on the most advanced ERRs, when it comes to scaling, the kind of technologies, the size of the reactors, which kind of downstream are they needing, because that we all have a challenge and scenarios trying to reward the industry there. And not also the big industry, like sometimes they might have their own research centers, etc. But we also focus quite a lot on the startups, that they have great ideas, great technologies, in which we can support with their scale. The IP, of course, and they know how is developing to start up, personnel supports on the whole way to the commercialization of their product or their processes. So you're saying basically that there is a lot of innovative know-how already available, and one missing link is also connecting the people on the right platforms. And then also I have players like you guys who have the infrastructure, the knowledge, and the network to provide this, the scale-up. Okay, good. So where do you see the challenges, mostly? Well, I could say that one of them challenges could rely on the kind of distance that you are using for the bio-based product production. So on the one side, we have like the usual biomass, or those biomass that are not so complicated, but somehow those could be competing with food and feed. And that's something that we can be doing right now, but in some years we won't be able to do, as it happened with first-generation biofuels, for example. So it's something that the oldest sustainability requirements that Europe will somehow establish are also coming to bio-based. So I think that working on those feedstocks that are not so easily manageable, that could ferment on the way to the platforms, that sometimes could have own toxicity during the process, et cetera, et cetera. But those that are quite available, and we have quite a amount of feedstocking that to be able to invest and research on that, because that could be a solution for our future. For example, one feedstock that I like quite a lot talking about is urban bio-based. OK, urban bio-based can be used for bio-gas production, bio-organization. However, it still has kind of sugars. It could have a sweet protein that could be valorized into all the most valid products before it goes to a bio-methanization. So that's something that we should search and think about, because we could solve two problems, the one, which is the management of that waste on the one side and the second one, that we are providing to the society bio-based products that is replacing the first one. Well, it sounds like on one hand a lot of work, but also a lot of potential. And I think we should definitely dive deeper into all these other technology and innovations that you talked about in the beginning, and have you on our full podcast episode. So till then, enjoy and successful fair today. Thank you very much. That would be a pleasure to go in through one of our last podcasts. And let's have a good conference today and tomorrow. Thank you. We will hear more from Goyze then in one of our full episodes, because she agreed to come on. And the next one that I happened to meet in the Hague was Gayatri from material connection with an ex, the ex effect. Oh, cool. Cool. And guess from which country she came to the Hague, John? Oh, wow. Well, you know, Matt, I'm going to guess here, but you know, I've heard of material connection. I actually have had some connection with material connection in my career over the years. And you know, my guess is they're probably from the U.S. Just an inkling. And what I mean, my guess is what they're doing is they're dealing with materials and connections related to materials, just guessing. That's what I'm thinking based on the name of the entity. Well, then listen carefully, because we will hear shortly from Gayatri, how she views the importance of materials for the design of new products and applications, but also the importance of education and the necessity of education to bring new, more sustainable material solutions into the industry. Oh, wow. Well, hey, Matt, you know, I'm all ears. I got data to prove it. Here we go. So I'm here with Gayatri. Is it the right pronunciation? Yes. Very good. So I'm here at the World Biomarkest Conference with Gayatri from Material Connection, with X. The X effect. Yeah. The X effect. And yeah, maybe you tell us what you're doing because I know material connection, but probably the listeners don't know. And what brought you here to the hate? Certainly. It's amazing to be here and part of, this is my first time to be honest, although I've been following this space for some years now. And what brought me here is certainly as a material connection, we are constantly looking for cutting-edge technology solutions that we can bring to our clients. We are primarily working at the intersection of materials, technology and design. And so seeing these new innovations and how they can change the whole product design process, what we call as material-minded design. Love it. So thinking more about the materials in terms of the potential that they provide, what kind of characteristics, what kind of performance, what the design attributes are possible, and then working backwards in terms of understanding the potential and exploiting it to make the best use of it for a desired application, and so we want to first make sure that we are providing that right platform or toolkit to our brands in order to get access to these new technologies. And then the best work comes out of when everyone works together. And for us to provide that ecosystem to our clients, we want to make sure that we're finding the right partners. And these conferences providers have prayed avenue in terms of connecting with like-minded folks working in this space, whether it is coming from a research organization, we have a great presentation for the University of Maine called the Nanosimulus Valley. Love it. So again, identifying those key partners that can be coming from university, that can be coming from corporate world, material startups, you know, investors, VCs. We need all of them to work together in order to unlock the potential of materials and technologies for creating a more sustainable. Beautiful. And yeah, I think one of the keywords is definitely the collaboration and what's needed to really effectively collaborate in this field and create solutions that are not only innovative, but especially scalable, because that's time is running, so scalability is important. And what I understand is you basically also create a common language because we have to bring together designers, innovators, but also the large industry to provide the infrastructure. How do you see the role of education? Is it something that we have to invest more and provide more platforms, actually, with the right contents to provide the education level that is needed to enforce these collaborations? I cannot emphasize enough the importance and the necessity of education, especially now, because today's consumers are very knowledgeable. They have, you know, all this information and data and their fingertips through digital technologies, but with that kind of, you know, automation also comes the challenges in terms of having more credible data. And there is a lot more education that needed across the entire value chain, not just from the brand side or the consumer side, but even from the manufacturer side. Because most of the times, these bigger corporations, chemical companies, don't necessarily have visibility into their existing supply chain in terms of where they're getting their feedstock, how they're making these materials. It was a dialogue between not just, you know, intersector, but intersector conversations as well to understand what's going on inside their own country and the product chain. At the same time, communicating that more effectively in a more transparent manner with their clients and ultimately with the end users. Beautiful. I think we have a lot of topics that we should dive into deeper, but I'm already looking forward to invite you to our podcast for a full episode. Thanks a lot, Gayatri, for being here. My pleasure. Thank you so much for chatting with me and I'm equally excited to be on your podcast to continue the conversation. So, this was Gayatri, and Gayatri also agreed to come on our podcast soon. And we will hear more about innovations with material technologies, but now we come to Thomas. Thomas from Germany, and he tells us a bit about ingredient branding and what ingredient branding means for companies that innovate with new solutions and how they can change their role from being just a supplier to true drivers of the industry. Matt, I can't wait to hear this one, you know, because it also reminds me of one of our recent podcasts with John Besson, Dr. John Besson. We talked about exploring innovation space. You know, you and I both have really, really soft spots for innovation being kind of technical nerds. But here is a great example of innovation being yes technical, but here it's also about positioning and messaging because here it's related to branding, but it's all about creating value. So, I can't wait to hear this. Great. And now let's listen to it. So, I'm here with at the World Buying Markets with Thomas Vuteriewicz. Thomas, tell us more. What are you doing? Hey Mateusz, great to be here. Yeah, my name is Thomas Vuteriewicz. I'm the founder and managing director of brand. We are dealing with a so-called ingredient branding, and we are trying to help our customers to extract more value from their sustainable innovations by stepping out of the role of a supplier and becoming a brand by themselves, and through that also increasing their position in the supply chain to become truly a business partner of their clients versus a supplier that is often treated quite badly. Yeah, so we're here at a kind of material-focused event. Is there something significant that has changed over the last couple of years when it comes to branding of material technologies? Yeah, I think the biggest change we see is a common understanding that there is no single material or no single company that can solve alone the problems related to sustainability or ecological issues. So what is needed in the future is more collaboration and therefore also the ingredient brand model is moving a bit from this linear model I want to create a demand for my proprietary solution towards aligning also with others along the supply chain and creating more of a network through which those technologies can be scaled and commercialized, but there is also some problems related to such collaboration. Yeah, one of the problems that I see are the challenges is that it's still sometimes lacking the common language in terms of standardization but also maybe goals that in terms of sustainability that people have or expectations, not really goals, but expectations. How do you see the role of events like this here where you actually bring together very versatile members of the entire value chain? Is this a good idea? Yeah, it's fantastic. I think the concept of the event not only have a conference but really to sponsor one to one meetings and networking is important. As I said, there needs to be more collaboration from the very raw material all the way towards a retail and consumer and this platform is one of the key events in Europe that trying to establish kind of a common understanding of where the world is going. Another important element is the legislation that is now kicking in. I think starting with the EU Green Deal from the von der Leyen Commission we now see a lot of initiatives that are going towards the prevention of greenwashing towards the legal requirements to be claim proof. I think claim proofness is something that is absolutely crucial for the future of sustainability so that no company and no brand can make any more sustainability claims that are not 100 percent defined or 100 percent proven by activities by measurements and ideally also externally validated. I think that's also pointing to a very important aspect when it comes to enabling this type of collaboration because it's trust. I think here we have still sometimes a long way to go. I would be happy if we can continue this conversation and maybe we see us on our podcast. Thank you very much and have a great rest of the show and I think we have to go inside and follow the next program. Very good. So now we know what is ingredient branding and in the next interview we will get to know something about how to valorize the value chain of price. Oh yeah. Hey Matt, you know where I'm originally from, but I've been living in the world of fries for many years, meaning Belgium, you know, fritches in the north and home fritz in the rest. Oh perfect. Talk about fries. Well, this will be interesting because I got hold of all who was with Dutch and he is the innovation manager of royal cuisine and will tell us more about how to, you know, develop bio-based products out of the crop value chain. Boom. Man, I can't wait to hear this Matt because also another example of all these innovations that are taking us away from a linear economy, away from a linear value chain, and also reducing carbon dioxide emissions. So this is great. This is great. This is what we want to do. Perfect. Listen. Well, I'm still here at the world bio markets and I'm now with a company that is utilizing the value chain of fries. Well, that's what we heard in the beginning. There was an opening keynote from Royal Cuisine. And now I'm here with Paul. Paul, tell us more about you. What are you doing here? So I'm Paul. Yeah, I'm an innovation manager at the Ghosts and Innovation. So it's really a central role in the company, sort of the central innovation that we do. We look at all the feedstocks that we have from our crops, like the potato, sugar beads, jickery. It's quite a broad spectrum of crops that we have. And yeah, we try to valorize like the whole crop. So yeah, we tend to say or tend to strive to 100% circularity and go beyond 100% actually. It's not just giving it just to the animals as feed, that also make new bio-based products out of it. And yeah, even if we're in front of us, we have a soap bar that's made of certain ingredients that you can find in jickery roots and in other kind of crops that we have. So it's really versatile and you can do enormous amounts of applications with it. And that's what I find really interesting about world biomarkers. It's really a broad range of companies that come here. We are also at a sort of an outdog at this conference because we are not that big in bio-based yet. But we are doing a lot in different markets in home-person care, agro-campals, in textiles, in adhesives. It's really a broad spectrum of product market combinations. So that gives us a really good reach here as well. And I find that the energy is really good. Everybody's open to really get in touch, get connected, and strive to a better bio-based economy and one step forward at a time. Yeah, and we just talked before. I think one of the key elements that we've heard already today also from in the keynote, but also from other interviews is how do you foster actually interdisciplinary collaboration? How do you provide solutions that provide actually also a base for innovation? And this is, as I understand, this is also kind of your role. How important do you see the interdisciplinary? Because you already said you're working together with different type brands. And I've seen how many of these are and from different areas. How important is it to have a common language there? And then also have events like this here to create this common language in order to connect all the different stakeholders. Maybe what are the stakeholders that you are working with in the value chain? So we are quite a vertically integrated company. So we are from a lens on to the ingredients that we provide, even consumer products in Africa, the potato fries and sugar. So it's quite a vertically integrated. But we try to see collaborations from the challenges that we have or try to accelerate certain innovations that we cannot or have not developed ourselves. So we provide also the means for scaling up, piloting, yeah. With finding some synergies between companies like I started, that has developed technology, maybe, yeah, we're doing for the past five to ten years or something. And it's now at certain points that they need to or want to scale up. They don't find the means or they have this chicken and the egg story up. We need to have an off-take agreement to have this investment ready. So it costs a lot of money, of course, to scale. And we try to provide and help them as well to make this bridge and get to go to market. So we have a lot of feedstocks that all these technologies might be able to utilize. So we are looking for ways to get rid of these feedstocks or to sell these feedstocks. And we also have a distribution network in quite a lot of areas. So yeah, it's quite a broad spectrum as well, which we can help them with as well. So to take off what they eventually produce. We're sort of in between trying to bridge this technology to the market. The interface. The interface. Yeah, and I think what you just launched last week you just said is an interesting thing. And maybe we should do a little advertisement for this. So what is it? Yeah, so we just launched the Cosyn Connect platform, which, yeah, it has a lot of challenges on there. Every few months we open up an open call where we are looking for, at the moment we are looking for an open call for protein. So we have just last year launched our internal starter called Cosyn Protein. And they are still looking for additional sort of proteins. They can add to their portfolio, for instance. And in this open call, we are, yeah, seriously looking for partnerships. The partners that we can work with to launch new proteins or eventually scale new protein products. And we can extract from the website streams or from, yeah, we can produce by fermentation. The whole shebang, it's quite a broad race that you can think of. It's really an open call and we should invite everyone. We should invite everyone, yeah, so it just opened up. All the innovators come to the platform. Come to the platform, take a look. Messages, there are the contact information is on there as well. We will just have a look. And then we hopefully can dive into the deeper into the results. Because it would be, of course, amazing if we can talk a bit more about your technology and have you on the podcast for a full-time episode. Thanks a lot. Enjoy. And in the end of the first day, I actually got hold of one of the key persons of the world biomarkets, our dear friend Paul McDonald's. Oh, okay. Yeah. I got hold of him during lunch break and let him summarize the first day and also explain a bit more about what's happening behind the scenes. Oh, wow. I mean, I can't wait to hear this because I mean, of course, we got a chance to talk to Paul together on a podcast, I think, a month ago. So I can't wait to hear him and I mean, he really is a pioneer in bringing the industry together to enable the business growth. So I can't wait to hear this. Here we go. Finally, I got to the main person of the event. No, one of the owners of World Biomarkets, Paul. First of all, thanks for the invitation. It's a great event. We've had already a lot of cool discussions. We have good content. But I think the most important question is, how is your feedback so far? Are you still stressed? I'm less stressed than I was at about three o'clock this morning. Yeah, feedback has been superb. You know, we're trying to do something different. And as I keep saying to people, if we're going to accelerate the adoption and implementation of bio-based solutions, it comes down to commercialisation. And commercialisation really is built on connecting the right people to have meetings. And not ad hoc meetings, but pre-arranged meetings where both parties know what the other one can bring to the party. So, and that has gone, you know, we're halfway through day one. You know, we had to double the size of the delegate to delegate meeting tables because of demand at sort of midnight last night. So yeah, it's really, really, really positive. And from the keynote so far, like we've had feedstock providers, we've had brands, now we're going to have a cool panel also, where you connect the stakeholders of an entire value chain. So that's interesting. What was for you the most interesting one so far? Oh, that's a difficult question. My favourite quote from a presentation was from Andy Bassett, a covertive. Oh, yeah. And can I remember it? I wrote it down. It was something like, we have to get away from being a fashion parade of prototypes. That's a good one. That's a good one. We've, I've been talking with Royal. I've been talking with Royal Cosen. Yeah. And they also said that the most important thing is how do we actually bring all these innovations from this prototype stage into the market? And having an event where you really connect, especially those who have the power, not only to have the push effect from the innovators, but having this pull effect is the most important. Is there like changes in terms of branding also that you can experience? Like people from the innovation space changing their strategies in terms of branding? From the producer or from the brands themselves? From the producers. Yeah, I think, I think, to be honest, it's hard for me to have a comment on that, because I haven't seen it over... We can have another question. No, but you do see them because, you know, one of the big things they have to do is go from lab scale to startup scale up. And if you're going to be talking to a laurel or an on running or whatever else, it's not the most important thing that you need to present yourself in a certain way which is going to make you attractive to one of those types of companies. And therefore, one of the things that the conference focuses on quite a lot. And it will do for years to come is getting inside the minds of the brands. And whether you're selling to a brand or whether you're selling to a chemical company or whether you're trying to get investment, you still need to get into the psyche of the person that you want to be business with. And we've said that a key thing to scaling this sector is about commercialisation. So that's something else I think we'll build on for the future. Helping a pretty embryonic sector better understand how to commercialise and how to talk to their potential customers. And interestingly, you know, we do have a session tomorrow called Storytelling for Scientists. Which is exactly, okay, Storytelling is not your key skill, understandably. But you need to, you know, be good or better at it. Yeah, and which, so apparently this is one of the sessions that you're looking forward to also. What are the keynotes for tomorrow that you're looking forward to? So tomorrow we've got two big keynotes. Matt Lipscomb from DMC, giving us a bit of insight into his business and a view from the state, which would be cool. We've got Niels from OnRunning, who's always brilliant and very sort of thought-provoking and pushing the boundaries. That's some more really interesting panel discussions. We've actually got two really good panel discussions right at the end of the day. One is looking at PHA applications. And the other one, the very final session, is getting a view from around the world. So I'm interviewing or hosting a panel with somebody from India, somebody from Australia, and I've now forgotten where the other person is from. From what are on the world? From what are on the world? From what are my own practice? We really love the new period. So yeah, so that would be good. And that sort of leads into how to be trying to nationalize the event as well. Which is one of the reasons why we're starting to get a dialogue over. If you want to partner with somebody in a different country, what are the barriers you need to overcome? Yeah, I've seen already that you have... It's an event that is hosted in Europe, but I think more than 50% are coming from outside of Europe also. Like I've talked to Material Connection, Gayatri from the US, from Brazil, also, Vibiana, and so on. How did you get these people interested in coming to Europe? I think we have two presentations this morning. We're only halfway through the day one, and we have two presentations from the States. One from the University of Maine, one from the States of Nebraska. And I think America has, in some instances, so much to offer. And they're looking for partnerships with European sort of players. So I think it would be wrong of me to say we've done anything sort of special or sort of amazing. I think we're gathering the right groups of people. And if you want to meet the people here, then it doesn't matter whether you're in America, Australia, or Timbuktu. Eventually, over time, you're going to find the value of attending is too good to me, basically. Yeah, that's a good wrap up. I hope we're going to get you for a full podcast episode after the event, so that you can report whether it was really super-stressy or not. Of course, for you. But also, maybe some of the feedback from the participants that were here, because what I received so far, and we're going to listen to it also on this episode, for sure, was super positive, especially like having the opportunity to network right next to the conference venue, which gives a lot of flexibility also. And yeah, we hope we're going to have ketchup after the conference again. Thanks, Paul. Wow, Matt. That was great. Mike, one of my key takeaways there was what Paul said, get away from being a fashion parade of prototypes. Wow, that is so right on the point. And it's not to take away from innovation. You always want innovations coming from the beginning all the way to commercial. But I get this point. You don't want an industry that's staying always at the TRL low level. So really great stuff. What do you think? No, definitely. I think this was super powerful. And I was very happy that I got hold of him. And of course, you know, he's doing such a great job with this event. And as we've heard also from the other guests, they really appreciate also the someone driving us this format and someone really pushing this forward. As you just said, like to hire TRL levels and, you know, commercialize these innovative solutions. Yeah, this is this is the end of the of the first part of our World Biomarket's conclusions. And we will have, we can tell you already today, we will have a little follow-up with some more guests among others, someone talking very famous, talking about my senior based materials. And then we will have our friends talk to my digital product passports and the importance of blockchain technology. Yes. And even someone from the most innovative running shoe brand. Can you guess who that is? Wow. This is going to be great. I mean, I think just keep it secret, you know. Okay. You'll reveal it during the next episode I would think, you know. First of all. What I have to say is, I mean, okay. Call me a nerd, but I really mean this. Just another example of tonight of, you know, the balls being moved forward for Cardinaveta for, you know, innovations are taking place. Real things are happening. And yeah, industries are growing up and we're able to have careers from that. That's great. And we're solving some problems that are really important to solve. It's so cool, man. Can't wait for the next episode.