Two companies have been announced as winners of EuropaBio’s Most Innovative Biotech SME Award 2014. The award ceremony took place yesterday in Brussels, as part of the second edition of the European Biotech Week.
Bio-on, an Italian company founded in 2007 to create 100% natural products based on renewable resources or agricultural processing waste materials, and Magna International Inc., a leading global automotive supplier, have signed a cooperation agreement to start exclusive R&D activities on the use of bioplastics for the automotive industry.
Bio-on has developed a new kind of bioplastic created through the use of naturally occurring bacteria which feed off sugar beet by-products. In the process of fermentation, the material is turned into plastic (polyhydroxyalkanoate or PHA). The result is fully biodegradable in water and soil, an environmentally friendly product that does not rely on food as a natural resource and could provide alternatives to conventional plastics for the automotive industry.
It’s a revolution in the world of plastics: plastic coming from food waste. To achieve it is an Italian company in the province of Bologna: Bio-On. The owners of the company, set-up in 2007, are Marco Astorri and Guy Cicognani, former entrepreneurs in the field of electronic components for ski passes. Where is the link? Seeing those little cards abandoned in the valley, never decomposing, Astorri wondered if they could melt, like snow in the sun.
IL BIOECONOMISTA 