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Let’s wrap up the third edition of Chem Together 2022.
In a rainy afternoon, Chem Together #3 offered an intimate ambience to our participants, who could enjoy informative presentation, and a relaxed environment perfect to meet new people.
In this occasion the floor was given to professionals from the field of Sustainable Chemistry, one of the two main focuses of ACN next to Chemistry for Life Sciences. The next edition, instead, will find a common ground between these two areas. Curious? Follow us on Linkedin and subscribe to our mailing list from the homepage.
Chaincraft was represented at our event by the CEO and co-founder Niels van Stralen. The company is currently operating a demo plant to produce medium-chain fatty acids from agrifood waste in the Port of Amsterdam. They recently raised about 60 million euro to build a 20 kt/yr industrial scale plant, and they are looking for the perfect location in the Netherlands. From Niels’ talk our audience learnt how Chaincraft is now focusing on applications for animal nutrition, and for a sustainable farming. In the future, however, their researchers hope to be able to produce longer chains, or chains with an uneven number of C atoms, to explore new applications in detergents, lubricants and several other applications. In parallel, innovation of the process should lead to the use of post-consumer organic waste as feedstock. Everyone is curious to see what will happen.
Willem Burmanje, Forbo Flooring, not only took the floor, but of the floor could guess the age, composition, and harmful chemicals possibly present in it. Nothing to worry about, until the moment you want to dispose it, and possibly recycle it. Forbo was a pioneer in adopting LCA to evaluate the impact of their production processes, and they keep working with it. They are not only investigating innovative materials derived from biomass, but also incorporating principles of circular design in their newest products. Goodbye glues and options hampering recycling, they imagined and realize the flooring of the future.
Harmen Veldman shared some useful insights from the subsidy scheme KIEM GoChem, dedicated to SMEs who want to collaborate with knowledge centers all around the Netherlands. With a relatively small commitment from the company (20% of the total budget), the project can be subsidized for up to 40.000 euro. The next call rounds will be on October 2022 and January 2023. The take-away from this talk? The available budget is quite high, if you have an innovation problem that needs special equipment or expertise, you should consider applying.
For this edition, after several years from the last time, Chem Together was hosted again in Prodock. Using this great location was possible thanks to the Port of Amsterdam, one of our Gold members. We even heard that at least two participants considered to expand their businesses to the Port area or Prodock, chatting with their representatives present at the event. That is the kind of conversations we love to hear!
Thank you to ChemistryNL, ACN Gold member and sponsor of the event. And thank you to all the participants, our members, and team.
Enjoy some pictures from the event:
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