Financial support up to 30.000€ for SME’s developing biobased innovations

20-Nov-2014 - Belgium

SME’s can access ‘Innovation Coupons’ worth up to 30.000€ to assess the feasibility of an innovative biobased process at Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant in Ghent, Belgium. These Innovation Coupons are an initiative of Bio Base NWE, a project to support the development of the bio-based economy in North West Europe (NWE). So far, the partnership granted fifteen innovation coupons worth 10.000€ to smaller SME’s to validate biobased ideas. Raising the value of the coupon to a potential amount of 30.000€, provides Bio Base NWE with an extra tool to also assist larger SME’s looking for process-validation and to shorten the time-to-market for biobased innovations in general.

Bio Base NWE is a three-year and € 6,2 million project launched by the European Commission in 2013 to support the development of the bio-based economy in North West Europe (NWE). The Bio Base NWE partnership includes organisations from five different countries and works mainly with small and medium businesses (SME’s) to help facilitate innovation and business development in bio-based technologies.

One of the tools of the partnership is financial support by way of Innovation Coupons. Initially, these coupons represented a value of 10.000€ each for work undertaken at the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant, an independent, flexible, state-of–the-art demonstration facility in Ghent, Belgium, to demonstrate innovative bio-based technologies. Fifteen innovation coupons have been awarded so far and the impact of the coupons on SME’s is very positive.

However, an analysis of the coupon system revealed that a coupon worth € 10.000 is too small to allow many SMEs to effectively interact with the coupon scheme and was therefore not stimulating bioeconomy development as intended. Lieve Hoflack, Manager of the Bio Base NWE project, says: “The SMEs requesting a coupon are all micro-SMEs of 10 employees or less, using the coupon for an idea-validation of a process that is still far from being market-ready. Larger SMEs are typically more interested in more expensive process-validation as idea-validations are done in-house.”

SME’s can apply for an Innovation Coupon until June 2015.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/150537/financial-support-up-to-30-000-for-smes-developing-biobased-innovations.html