New TransBIB white paper: Developing competence hubs for the industrial bioeconomy

How can regions strategically advance and permanently establish the industrial bioeconomy? The new TransBIB white paper, ‘Developing centres of excellence for the industrial bioeconomy – lessons learnt from five model regions’, provides practical answers to this question.

Based on five expert interviews, the white paper analyses various regional centres of expertise: BioBall in the FrankfurtRhine-Main region, Bio4MatPro in the Rhineland mining region, BioZ in Central Germany, the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region and the Stuttgart region. The focus is on regional starting points, development pathways, stakeholder constellations, governance and funding models, as well as challenges, success factors and prospects for sustainability.

The analysis shows that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. However, successful hubs build on regional strengths and specific value chains, involve businesses at an early stage and create effective coordination structures. Recurring challenges include fragmented stakeholder landscapes, a lack of opportunities for pilot projects and scaling up, and long-term funding.

The white paper is aimed in particular at stakeholders from the fields of regional and economic development, academia, politics and business. It helps readers to reflect on their own current situation and to identify transferable approaches for establishing or further developing regional bioeconomy centres of excellence.

The white paper complements the publication ‘Building and Strengthening Regional Expertise – An Analysis of Good Practice at the Straubing Bioeconomy Competence Hub’. Together, these two publications form a basis for learning, knowledge transfer and networking processes within the industrial bioeconomy.