The jury selected the Brazilian team from Taubaté with their SANergya proposal as the winner of the G-BiB competition. The overall final of the first annual Global Biobased Business competition, an initiative of the BioInnovation Growth mega-Cluster (BIG-Cluster), took place yesterday at the 3rd Brazilian BioEnergy Science and Technology (BBEST) Congress in Campos do Jordão, Brazil. The competition aimed to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation. The challenge for all the teams was to write an innovative business plan based on a design for sustainable production of biorenewable products such as biofuels and biomaterials or partial solutions that will support developing those products.

N-Chroma from Wageningen University, SANergya from the University of Taubaté and Bicomer from the University of Bielefeld competed in the overall final after they won the semi-finals in respectively the Netherlands, Brazil and Germany. They were chosen from a total of 14 teams, existing of Master and PhD students. 

N-Chroma made a business plan to commercialize the use of microorganisms to produce sustainable high quality colour compounds for use in the food, cosmetic and nutraceutical industries. SANergya will provide solutions for waste treatment through biogas purification and add value to by-products e.g. convert surplus sludge and municipal waste in biogas to also produce fertilizer and elemental sulphur and Bicomer made a business plan to develop a fermentative platform technology to produce valuable carotenoids like astaxanthin for the cosmetics industry with aims to develop AVASTA (copolymer of AVA and ASTA) for the cosmetics industry at a later stage.

The teams pitched their business plans to the BBEST audience and the jury. The jury members, Gonçalo Pereira (CTBE), Jan Wery (Corbion), Wilson Nobre Filho (FGV) and Manfred Kircher (CLIB2021) were very positive about the spirit and enthusiasm of the three teams and praised their  businesses plans contributing to a more sustainable bioeconomy. The jury was positive about the long term prospective and value added potential for both Bicomer and N-Chroma with their flexible technology and product range. According to the jury SANergya proposed to use simplistic technology to provide a highly needed service with a large GHG emission reduction potential. They developed an interesting no cure no pay model offering a complete service on site for waste and wastewater treatment for industrial plants. Their target market is impressive with concrete industry commitment.

Jan Wery handed over the award of €10.000,- provided by Corbion to the team from SANergya to further develop their business plan. SANergya will use the money to set up a pilot plant to scale up their technology.