New high-value products from marine microalgae for the Food, (aqua)Feed and Cosmetic Industries
Erdyn is happy to announce the recent release of the final newsletter of the MAGNIFICENT EU project (2017 – 2022). This final newsletter presents highlights and main conclusions of the project finalized in 2022. As a partner, Erdyn was in charge of the project setup and was the WP5 leader related to Dissemination and Exploitation, Market assessment, IPR management & Business case development.
In the last 10 years, the scale of production of microalgae increased tremendously in Europe. Demonstration facilities were built in the south of Europe, many of them with the support of the EU Horizon 2020 and BBI-JU programs, which allowed biomass production at a scale not seen before in Europe for microalgae. This scale allowed for product development, an essential step for the establishment of microalgae as a resource for biobased products. The project MAGNIFICENT successfully took this opportunity and challenge, to develop new products with algae ingredients for the food, (aqua)feed and cosmetic industry, while decreasing production costs, establishing the total biorefinery chain, up to product development, for the first time at pilot scale. The techno- economic, environmental, social and business potential of different business cases studied were assessed, based on data resulting from the project. 15 MAGNIFICENT partners, incl. 10 SMEs, 2 Large Companies and 3 R&D institutes, worked hard in an outstanding interactive and collaborative manner and successfully developed new products with high market potential. In addition, the way forward and improvement points in the field were accurately identified.
Dissemination and Exploitation, Market assessment, IPR management & Business case development (WP 5)
The collaborative work on WP 5, leaded by Erdyn, aimed to support and ensure the commercial implementation of the new biobased value chain, the new biobased materials and consumer products from microalgae, in line with EU legislation and end-market requirements. The analysis and selection of the most probable industrial scenarios and business cases for the whole value chain were carried out regarding different key aspects such as techno-economic feasibility, market potential and needs, social trends, competition and regulatory issues.
The economic feasibility of a unique production facility has been demonstrated as possible in some conditions highlighting both business opportunities and risks for the project. A specific scenario including the production of both seasonal Tisochrysis and Phaeodactylum tricornutum could offer an annual profit (costs vs. revenues analysis) at about 10M€ for the simulated facility. Cosmetic and nutraceutical markets seem to be the most profitable in these conditions. Promising functional products have been obtained into the prototyping stage for the different targeted end-markets and several promising leads have been already taken by the partners of the project. The main identified risk is the actual production costs of the lead products that could be reduced with some improvements of the refining processes. More efforts will be necessary to be completely compliant with market quality standards and legislation, especially in Food and Nutraceuticals.
Other activities were realized in order to reach optimal exploitation, IPR management, communication and dissemination of project results toward all major stakeholders (companies, universities, policymakers…) and the general public.
Conclusion of the project
The MAGNIFICENT project set as target the development of reliable microalgae-based products serving market demands for a sustainable future. The project has successfully developed and defined market opportunities for novel algae-rich products in the food, (fish) feed and cosmetic sectors. Besides promoting the use of natural and sustainably sourced raw materials, the development of these new algae-based products takes also into account consumers interests by promoting enhanced functionalities on aspects related to healthier foods, naturalness of skin care cosmetics and higher welfare status of farmed fish. Another important aspect -under continuous evaluation- is product safety and full compliance to the legal regulatory framework of the various markets.
The project results will contribute to the growth of the algae sector with a positive impact on SME’s and will strengthen the competitiveness of the European marine biotechnology industry. Thus the project contributes to the EU’s Blue Growth strategy to support sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors including development of new jobs. Furthermore the project results contribute to EU policies and priorities including Resource-efficient Europe, the EU Bioeconomy strategy and the European Green Deal.
On 9th March 2022, the MAGNIFICENT project team has also organised a public webinar (recorded and published on YouTube) to present highlights from the project entitled, High value products from marine microalgae: learnings and opportunities from the Magnificent BBI-JU / H2020 project (2017-2021).
The original and complete Final Newsletter of the MAGNIFICENT project is available at the following link : https://mailchi.mp/581fe375f760/magnificent-final-newsletter?e=%5bUNIQID
Publications from the project can be viewed and downloaded at the project website https://magnificent-algae.eu and our Zenodo community page https://zenodo.org/communities/magnificent.
For further information, please contact us (Vincent Jouenne – vincent.jouenne@erdyn.fr +33 (0)6 45 77 82 83 or +33 (0)1 77 75 79 86, Stéphane Boudin – stephane.boudin@erdyn.fr, Team “Industry and Sustainable Development” in Paris, France) or the Project coordination team (Wageningen University), Maria Barbosa (maria.barbosa@wur.nl) or Hans Reith, for more specific information and for exploitation.
The MAGNIFICENT project has received funding from the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme with grant agreement No. 745754.
