The establishment and acceleration of a sustainable bioeconomy requires the collaboration among different stakeholders between previously unconnected sectors. This interaction carries various challenges that need to be addressed towards the development of new value chains and bio-based business models.
The production, sale and use of sustainable bio-based products have a great potential to improve our environment. Many opportunities exist to create more products made of sustainable bio-based resources. However, the development of new cross-sectoral bio-based value chains requires synergies and strong collaboration between various sectors, both along and across the value-chains. Bio-based industries, brands, retailers and consumers need to overcome the various challenges that exist in their in between interaction to facilitate the development of new and sustainable bio-based value chains.
Along these lines, BIOBRIDGES carried out an analysis to provide insight into the cooperation between the key actors of the bioeconomy market landscape. Emphasis was put on mapping the factors that hinder the collaboration amongst them and investigate how trust and confidence can be enhanced towards the market uptake of bio-based products. To this end, an attempt was made to identify the challenges that exist in the interaction among industry, brand owners, retailers and consumers from each stakeholder’s point of view. The key challenges seem to be related to the lack of standardized labelling and certifications; IP and patent issues; high transfer costs; differences in prices per quantity per region; functionality and performance of bio-based products; difficulties in networking with other key stakeholders of the value chain; low level of awareness about bioeconomy (products and practices).
Author: Eleni Karachaliou, QPLAN INTERNATIONAL