26 februari 2020 | Nieuws
Today Miscanthus Group Haarlemmermeer, participant of GRACE, hosted the GRACE team at C-Bèta at Schiphol Trade Park. C-Bèta focuses on accelerating the transition to the circular economy. It is a living lab, a work- and event space for companies who contribute to the circular economy. GRACE is the biobased industry demonstration project ‘GRowing Advanced industrial Crops on marginal lands for biorEfineries’ (GRACE). Jeanet van Antwerpen, CEO SADC, shared SADC’s circular economy ambitions and results.
The collaboration between Miscanthus Group farmers and SADC already started in 2012. A Green Deal was signed in 2014 by Schiphol Trade Park, Wageningen University Research Department (UR) and the Miscanthus group. Goal was to cooperate in trial cultivation of tall grass and other crops with economic bio-based potential. Since then Miscanthus Group moved ahead and some interesting biobased products have been brought onto the market. One of these products even has been used in the newly built roads at Schiphol Trade Park (watch video).
GRACE aims at optimizing various miscanthus and hemp value chains. The consortium consists of 22 partners from universities, agricultural companies and industry. The project is coordinated by the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart (Germany). It is primarily (12.3 million €) funded by the ‘Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking’, a public-private partnership between the European Union and ‘Bio-based Industries Consortium’. The private project partners are contributing the remaining 2.7 million €. The goals of the project are to produce sustainable products with a strong market potential, to guarantee a reliable and affordable supply of sustainably produced biomass, and to better link biomass producers with the processing industry. In order to avoid competition with food and feed crops, miscanthus and hemp are cultivated on areas that have been polluted for example by heavy metals, or are unattractive for food production due to lower yields.