PRIMARY
New business for farmers and cooperatives in rural areas by local upcycling solutions using underutilized agricultural feedstocks
PRIMARY aims to develop and pilot local solutions for producing food, feed, bio-based materials, bioenergy, and fertilizers by valorizing underutilized agricultural biomass like grass, greenhouse & cotton by-products, and olive tree pruning abundant in Europe. Focusing on North-East (Finland) & South-East Europe (Greece), PRIMARY will offer business models and demonstrations in rural areas, piloting six process concepts: protein/fibre separation from grass; submerged/solid-state fermentation; fibre forming technology; pelletizing; and pyrolysis. The solutions piloted in the project are selected based on cascading feedstock use, considering regional conditions. Sustainability will be broadly assessed. An open innovation call will engage other partners and regions, promoting ecosystem growth and replicability. Results will be communicated via a stakeholder platform. A multi-actor approach is used in the development of processes and replicable business models, and for delivering guidance to farmers and SMEs, and advice to policymakers at national and EU level.
| Funding program | Horizon Europe |
|---|---|
| Call | HORIZON-CL6-2024-CircBio-02-6-two-stage |
| GA No. | 101180167 |
| Duration | 2025 - 2028 |
| EC Funding | € 5.256.210,50 |
| Website | |
| # Sectors | bioeconomy, smartruralareas |
Innovating Water Management
for Resilient Farming
blueprints
- 6 New processes including grass biorefinery, submerged fermentation and SSF, foam forming, pelleting and pyrolysis to biochar in the field of food, feed, biobased material, energy/fuel and fertilisers
- 4 underutilized agricultural feedstocks piloted and demonstrated together with primary producers and local actors in FI and GR
- 4 Business model blueprints for the new value chains in rural areas for sustainable valorisation of agricultural feedstocks
- 1 Open call to validate and further improve the business model blueprints, test the processes’ and value chains’ replicability and scalability potential in other European regions
- 1 dynamic simulation model for grass biomass availability
- 4 logistics optimization models for optimizing feedstock mobilization
- 2 online monitoring tools to predict feedstock availability and quality in the value chains
- 1 joint Stakeholder Platform established to widely share knowledge and collaborate with stakeholders
- >4 participatory and educational workshops in FI & GR and 1 at EU level
reframe.food being leader of WP4 Open Innovation, is responsible for the launch a single OC providing Financial Support to Third Parties (total budget of 900 k€) as a mechanism to engage stakeholders to i) validate the PRIMARY processes and business model blueprints, ii) test and promote the replicability and scalability potential of practical pilot cases to other regions and iii) develop new value chains for the PRIMARY feedstocks and demonstrate their economic feasibility. The call will be published on the PRIMARY website and EU Funding and Tenders portal, promoted through various channels and networks.
reframe.food will be also responsible for the technical monitoring of the OC sub-projects as well as for the development of good practices and lessons learnt that will be compiled into a series of ‘learning stories’ illustrating how the sub-projects contribute to the bioeconomy strategy and CAP.