The exploitation of marine bio-resources through biotechnological solutions is a field with massive potential for innovation & economic growth, but it is a relatively young discipline, so opportunities & key enabling factors need a coordination.B-Blue project aims at gathering the key actors of the Med BBt sector and increase their innovation capacity and their coordination in order to unlock the innovation potential in the field through joint transnational initiatives.

The overall objective of the project is the aggregation and coordination of the Med Blue Biotechnology (BBt) organisations and stakeholders in a transnational and multi-actor community to develop a multilateral coordination framework to support capacity building and innovation transfer in the sector; and, facilitate design and implementation in the Med area of joint and integrated plans, initiatives, programmes and policies boosting the Med BBt sector. The ultimate goal is to define, design and implement a structured framework (involving from the first steps also the MENA countries) that eases the established BBt community to not only catch new business opportunities or multilateral initiatives in terms of coordinated financing requests, but also to orient policy and financing programmes to align national/regional initiatives at Med level in the BBt sector.

During the relatively short duration that the project has been operational, among many successes,  all 8 participating countries had successfully completed their national Blue Biotechnology Hubs (BBH) connecting stakeholders from governing authorities, research institutions, small to medium sized businesses, universities, and other actors with interest in the sector. We have managed to jump-start cooperations that will keep bearing fruit in the future. One of those was a workshop »The possibilities of introducing a novel value chain for the production of natural cosmetics« lead by dr. Ana Rotter from NIB, which sparked enthusiastic discussion among all of the participants and laid the groundwork on which successful cooperations, competencies and products, will be developed.

Project title: B-Blue Building the Blue Biotechnology Community in the Mediterranean

Project acronym: B-Blue

Programme: Interreg Mediterranean

Total budget: 1,499,916.01 €

ERDF funding: 1,242,624.38 €

IPA funding: 32,304.25 €

Project duration: 22 months

10 partners from 8 countries

Lead partner: ENEA – Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Roma)

Project website: https://b-blue.interreg-med.eu/

Project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.