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Innovative biomaterials production from wine industry waste

Objective

Vegea is a young start-up with a solid chemical background with long experience in natural polymers and industrial processes, constituted by researchers coming from the academy with a strong entrepreneurial inclination. It has already received several awards recognizing the value of its disruptive innovation, such as Start&Cup Award-2015, Start&Re-Start-2016, and H&M Global Change Award-2016 for a total funding of more than €300.000. The main scope of VegeaTextile project is the deployment of an absolute breakthrough innovation demonstrating a novel, cost-effective and eco-friendly process for the production of organic textile and introducing in the European leather goods market a new kind of bio-textile using a non-animal and renewable raw material, considered up today an agricultural waste: the grape marc. In fact, the production process can be classified “low impact” for the environment since it makes minimal use of chemical reagents or additional water, and at the contrary, it produces reusable water from the grape marc exsiccation (60% w/w). Our innovation will allow leather goods manufacturers to answer to the increasing customers’ awareness about environmentalist and animalist concerns, to propose a new product with same quality of common leather and, at the same time, to find an alternative and renewable raw material, helping them to overcome stringent regulations about animal treats and tanning processes. Upon project length we aim at industrializing the process production by 2022, reaching a forecasted production capability of 4.5 million m2/yr, the ambitious business objectives of € 8,64 million net profits over 4 yrs of commercialization (2022), and consequently a greater-than-market ROI (26%) and profitability (22%). For the launch of VegeaTextile by 2019, we foresee a total investment of more than €900.000 of which €801.875 budgeted for the Phase-2.

Call for proposal

H2020-SMEInst-2016-2017

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Sub call

H2020-SMEINST-2-2016-2017

Coordinator

VEGEA SRL
Net EU contribution
€ 561 312,00
Address
Via giuseppe verdi 12
24121 Bergamo
Italy

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Nord-Ovest Lombardia Bergamo
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost
€ 801 875,00