Bioeconomy - Initiative

 In 2012, the number of companies grew by only 2.3%, their workforce by 6.9 %, and their revenues  by 10.7%.

The ten top-selling drugs worldwide include five biopharmaceuticals. Medical biotech companies in Germany have so far not developed any blockbuster drug, and in 2012 they did not gain approval to market a new drug. However, a growing trend of the pharmaceutical industry is to outsource their research, which leads to increased cooperation between the pharmaceutical industry and biotech companies.
 

Industrial biotech companies are benefiting from changes in politics and society. As part of the Bioeconomy Initiative, the Federal Government encourages unusual alliances between biotech companies and other industries. For example, microorganisms should in the future be used to convert CO₂ emissions of the steel industry into basic chemicals and other high-value products.
 
Also, the use of renewable resources instead of fossil resources and the public awareness of bio-based products are growing. Due to this, chemical and consumer industry companies, such as BASF and DSM, cooperate more and more with biotech companies.

The Bioeconomy

The bioeconomy provides an opportunity for European innovation and differentiation. In certain areas, the chemical industry has been using substantial volumes of renewable raw materials. Furthermore, the use of alternative feedstock in the chemical industry is gaining importance in light of increasing oil prices and finite fossil resources. Although our industry will remain predominantly petrochemicals-based in the next decades, there is potential for an increased use of bio-based feedstock - not only for the production of specialty chemicals but also of the key building blocks of high-volume chemicals.

 One key limitation for the bioeconomy to develop in Europe is the availability of  renewable feedstock at competitive prices and in sufficient quality and quantity. The European bioeconomy definitely needs to be based on a mix of home-grown and imported raw materials, due to a foretasted limited availability of biomass in Europe.

Biomass today is already being widely used in the production of food and feed, the pulp and paper industries as well as for the bio-fuel industry. A broad base of locally  developed and imported renewable feedstock will be required in order to develop a successful bioeconomy in Europe.

In order for the demand generation process to be economically viable and sustainable, the approach must be definitely market- driven, by consumers’ requirements and expectations. In this respect, the use of mandatory targets should be avoided. Moreover, taxation policy should not create any distortion of competition or conflicts of interests between value chains, as is presently the case for instance with biofuels, biomass for energy or animal fats incorporated in bio-fuels, clearly detrimental to the use of renewable feedstock in the chemical industry.