Natac’s CEO takes part in a high-level roundtable with the EU Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation

Natac’s CEO, Antonio Delgado, participated last June 24th in a high-level round table with the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research and Startups, Ekaterina Zaharieva, to discuss the importance of the bioeconomy for the future of Europe.

The meeting, organised as part of the ‘R&I for a Competitive Green Transition’ conference in Brussels, brought together leaders from leading companies in the sector such as A4F, AmphiStar, Avantium, Enough, Metsa Spring, Michelin, Solmeyea, VCI, ECBF, SQIM, Trapview, as well as representatives from the Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC) and the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU).

During the meeting, Delgado underlined the importance of aligning environmental and social sustainability with economic viability, stressing that ‘it is not simply a matter of recycling to achieve a clean industry, but of generating value by transforming biomass into natural ingredients’.

Europe must build on its scientific, technological and industrial heritage to lead the bio-based industries sector. “We compete on value, not price, and that is what allows us to develop and industrialise innovative solutions sustainably. In this sense, public-private partnerships such as the CBE JU are essential to transform innovation into real industrial value,” he said.

As a concrete example, he explained the model applied by Natac, which extracts active ingredients from the olive leaf -an agricultural by-product- and converts them, through technology, into essential ingredients for medicines for the treatment of rare diseases. Subsequently, the residues of these leaves are used as a source of energy or fertiliser, thus closing a truly circular process.