On 30th September, ECRN organised the Second Partnership Meeting of the S3 Platform Thematic Area on Chemicals, alongside with the Commission-funded technical services – ReConfirm, and ECRN members and lead regions of the Partnership – Lombardy and Limburg.

In this Partnership, ECRN members Limburg, Lombardy, Mazovia, Usti and Saxony-Anhalt join forces with Catalonia and Central Ostrobothnia to work on concrete actions to support the needs of their local chemical industries. The essence of the Chemicals partnership itself is to develop solutions on sustainable production, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and resource consumption in chemical plants, promoting new high value-added value chains and their integration across regional borders and across sectors . The highest concentration of talent in chemical industry are in Europe: making use of this talents and maintaining competitiveness in the EU is a challenge that the Partnership aims to meet.

During this plenary meeting, hosted by Limburg in their representation premises in Brussels, partners worked hand-in-hand to deepen the priorities of the Partnership.

ECRN Network and Policy coordinator Neli Georgieva opened the day by highlighting three words which would guide participants during this meeting: interregional, investments and connecting to each other. Nikos Pantalos, Senior Policy Officer from DG GROW, on the other hand reminded the focus of this Platform: the modernisation of the European industries. To  analyse the strengths and challenges of each region is crucial, as much as sharing ideas and needs across regions in order to remove barriers for joint investment.

Following the last meeting, partners  split in 4 thematic working groups to continue the discussion into focused themes : Alternative Feedstock, Polymers, Chemical Recycling and Sustainable Process Technologies. This second partnership meeting was the opportunity for regional industry and research representatives to present the work done and share their advancements and project ideas to the whole Partnership.

External experts commissioned by the European Commission provided the participants with precious advice to help selecting and developing projects viable for the Technical Assistance facilities, an EU free-of-charge service providing assistance in developing business plans and funding mixes for the investment projects.

Following their advice and the constructive discussions, the partners selected 5 concrete project ideas:

• Valorisation of agro-food biomass (by Nowalchimica, Lombardy)
• Electric cracking technology (by Brightlands Chemelot Campus, Limburg)
• Flow Chemistry (by Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ))
• Plastics recycling (by Brightlands Materials Center, Limburg)
• Chemical Recycling (pyrolysis) (by Unipetrol Centre for Research and Education (UniCRE), Usti)

Pictures of the meeting have been gathered in a gallery below. Have a look!