National Contact Point
Name
NIKA JIROUŠEK BALEN
Email
nika.j-balen@mps.hr
Institution
Department of Research and Development of Strategies
Ministry of Agriculture
The BIOEAST Initiative’s National Contact Point (NCP) is the Ministry of Agriculture. One of the NCP’s main roles at national level is to interact and coordinate the national views with other bioeconomy related ministries.
Description
The Ministry of Agriculture is the central public administrative authority for agriculture and forestry, food processing industry, rural development and fishery.
Main task areas related to RDI and the bioeconomy:
Sustainable agricultural holdings; Sustainable food production taking into account ongoing climate change; Sustainable forest management; Sustainable economic development of agricultural holdings; Sustainable management of natural resources; Efficient energy use in agricultural holdings.
Relevant details regarding the bioeconomy
JRC Bioeconomy KC – https://datam.jrc.ec.europa.eu/datam/mashup/BIOECONOMICS/
National bioeconomy hub of Croatia is available at the following link
BIOECONOMY-RELATED PROJECTS
CELEBIO – https://hr.celebio.eu/
Bio-based strategies and roadmaps for enhanced rural and regional development in the EU CELEBio project aims at strengthening the enabling environment for bio-based businesses in eight countries of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.
uP_running – https://www.up-running.eu/
Take-off for sustainable supply of woody biomass from agrarian pruning and plantation removal
GRACE – https://www.grace-bbi.eu/
The Bioeconomy project GRACE is made up of a unique consortium of 22 partners from both academia and industry and also includes SME’s, farmers and an industrial cluster. These are joining forces to demonstrate three goals
- the upscaling of miscanthus crop production
- the production of both miscanthus and hemp on lands of low productivity, abandoned land or land with contaminated soil
- the establishment of 10 biobased value chains at a scale of relevance to industry.
REFUCOAT – https://www.refucoat.eu/
REFUCOAT is an EU-funded project that aims to develop fully-recyclable food packaging with enhanced gas barrier properties and new functionalities using high performance coatings. Active coatings will be used in films and trays as an alternative to current metallised and modified atmospheric packaging (MAP) to avoid the use of non-renewable materials in packaging that currently leads to complex and expensive recycling steps.
BIOBRIDGES – https://www.biobridges-project.eu/BIOBRIDGES project was conceived to tackle the key challenge of improving the marketability of bio-based products (BBPs) by fostering close cooperation and partnerships among bio-based industries, brand owners and consumers’ representatives.
PULPACKTION – http://pulpacktion.eu/
Pulpacktion envisions a 100% bio-based integral packaging solution with similar properties as existing fossil-based packaging solutions. The new product will fulfill medium and high barrier requirement’s as demanded from food and electronics industries. Pulpacktion will provide replacements to current fossil-based packaging using well-known and largely used material such as cellulose.