One year after its official launch and coinciding with World Environment Day (5 June), the second General Assembly of the SustaiNext project took place in Barcelona (Spain) on 5-6 June 2024. The entire consortium gathered once more to update on the progress made in each Work Package within the last six months. Each of the Work Packages had the chance to offer its best version and demonstrate its know-how in areas as varied as agriculture, the food industry, engineering, botanical extracts, communication, animal feed, cosmetics, life cycle assessment and much more.
For the first time, we also had the presence of the three members of the Advisory Board —Francisco Gírio, Elena García Garrido and Jesús Alonso Sánchez—, who offered their expert external viewpoint on the project and both its challenges and opportunities.
In addition to returning home with an overview of the project’s progress over the last six months, the consortium was also enriched by practical workshops and interactive visits to the facilities of our partners set in the Barcelona area. Even though it is always a rewarding experience to get to know our partners in more depth and see what their daily work consists of, as well as what their added value is for the project, in the case of both Nutraresearch and IRIS Technology Solutions, (two companies that have R&D in their DNA), the consortium’s expectations were fully satisfied:
- Nutraresearch is a leading company providing research and development services, technology transfer and customised manufacturing of cutting-edge food supplements, medical devices and nutraceutical cosmetics. The consortium had the opportunity to visit their manufacturing plant and understand their strong commitment to innovation and sustainability in all their products.
- IRIS Technology Solutions is a leading company in manufacturing photonic and artificial intelligence solutions for the control of industrial and production processes in real-time. We had the opportunity to marvel at their optics, electronics and chemistry laboratories and to discover what lines of research they are currently working on.
The enthusiasm, professionalism and commitment that characterise SustaiNext, the first flagship project funded by Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU) that aims to transform the traditional botanical extracts industry, came together once again, at a time when the project is celebrating its first year of life and, therefore, faces an exciting phase that is not without its challenges.
But we at SustaiNext are confident that we will be able to cope with them.
