Two new European consortia of reference in Circular Economy under the Horizon Europe program have just been awarded with the participation of ANFACO-CECOPESCA. These mobilize around 8 million euros over the next 4 years and will promote applied research in the sea-industry complex to obtain high added value bio-ingredients.
The projects, called Valorish and One Earth, involve more than 20 partners from 10 different countries including companies, universities and international research centers. This marks a new milestone in its innovation trajectory by obtaining, for the second time, two projects in the same highly competitive call of the Horizon Europe program (“HORIZON-CL6-2023-CircBio-02-3”).
Of the 39 proposals received, 5 were selected for the second phase, and only the 2 in which Anfaco participates were approved. The presence of Anfaco guarantees that the seafood processing industry will benefit from its results, as a representative entity of the sector in Spain. These results push the sector towards the concept of blue growth and sectoral hybridization thanks to biotechnology. One Earth is a new biorefinery concept that arises from the need to create more sustainable circular processes for obtaining bio-ingredients.
The project is led by Professor Lorenzo Bertin of the University of Bologna and has 14 partners from Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Greece, Croatia, Ukraine and Argentina. Anfaco focuses its participation on technical activities of by-product valorization, socio-economic impact analysis and exploitation of results, such as the application in its pilot aquaculture plant of feeding trials with trout and sea bass. Fish scales and bones, whey and chicken feathers are among the by-products that will be incorporated into integrated value chains in this area.
The new bioingredients will be used for the development of final products: aquaculture feeds, bioadhesives, nutraceuticals, cosmetics and fertilizers that will be validated in the final stage.
It is estimated that the valorization of these by-products through the processes to be developed at One Earth will reduce greenhouse gas production by 30 % and energy consumption by 20 % compared to their conventional treatment as waste. At the same time, aquaculture and livestock producers could increase their income by up to 5 % thanks to these by-products, which would go from being considered waste to new raw materials.
Valorish or computation applied to sustainability is a project coordinated by IDENER, the project consortium is formed by 9 partners from Spain, Italy, Norway and Portugal. The industrial activity of fish and seafood processing companies is associated with the generation of by-product side streams, which the project positions as the central axis for obtaining high added value elements such as Omega 3 fatty acids, especially EPA and DHA. For the extraction of Omega 3, new sustainable technologies such as supercritical CO2, subcritical extraction and eutectic solvents will be optimized. On the other hand, bacterial fermentation will be used to obtain protein hydrolysates.
