The coordinator established a management structure for the overall legal, contractual, financial and administrative issues, and internal communication. For operational issues, it involves the Executive Team that is comprised of all work package leaders and the VCS, and the coordinator supported by a team at the Research Council of Norway. Monthly online partner meetings have been held in addition to the formal consortium meetings.
Value Chain Supervisors were appointed and were central to ensuring focus on cross-cutting issues and value chain perspective. Stakeholder engagement was made by giving presentations to different stakeholders (policy makers, industry and researchers). The advisory board appointment was postponed to focus their support on stakeholder involvement and impact.
The cofunded call was well launched, well applied for, the 19 projects kicked-off, mid-term evaluated, end-term evaluated and final reports submitted. The mid-term evaluation gave important input and helped adjust the activities planned for the end of the cofund.
KPIs were developed at the beginning of BlueBio and used for monitoring and to analyse potential impact of projects funded in the cofunded call. KPIs like "Number of functional foods/ ingredients, nutraceuticals […]" and "Number of new products/ services" worked well, while "Number of stakeholders informed/ involved" and "Number of new jobs created" were more difficult to capture. The short time frame of both the funded projects and the ERA-NET limits the opportunity to measure impact. The analysis was presented at the BlueBio Final meeting.
A BlueBio communication plan, a visual identity and a website, including a partners-only website have been developed and social media accounts have been established. A newsletter and social media channels were established and regularly update to disseminate activities and results.
Three additional calls were launched, evaluated and monitored. Having the same partners responsible for the same tasks in all four calls ensured high quality and precision in all calls. The call scope of the 1st and 2nd Additional Calls was developed after deep analysis, identifying underfunded areas, and enabled funding of projects along the whole blue bioeconomy value chain. The 1st Additional Call funded 10 projects requesting € 11.3 million. The 2nd Additional Call funded 7 projects requesting € 7.6 million. The 3rd Additional Call was re-designed after exploring novel funding arrangements for projects, funding activities that would increase the impact of already funded BlueBio projects. The 3rd Additional Call funded 13 projects requesting € 259 000. JPI Oceans will take over the monitoring and dissemination of the remaining BlueBio projects, to ensure maximal impact and to create synergies with projects funded in related instruments. The analysis was presented at the BlueBio Final meeting.
BlueBio partners have updated and expanded the project database of cooperation in fisheries, aquaculture, seafood processing and marine biotech, originally developed within the COFASP ERA-NET. The database is merged with the Mission Ocean Implementation Platform.
In total, 12 meetings were organized to create project connectivity and synergy, both thematic ones for each call cohort, and topical ones covering everything from capacity building and commercialisation, to microbiome analysis and life cycle assessment. The meetings lead to knowledge exchange, collaboration and better monitoring and support. The learnings were published as a brief on the BlueBio website and the analysis was presented at the BlueBio Final meeting.
All projects funded in the three first calls have implemented Human Capacity Building activities, with monitoring ensuring high quality and support. Three advanced training courses were organised, one in collaboration with BlueMed CSA, to fill the knowledge gaps in the blue bioeconomy.
A foresight was organised with external facilitators, involving stakeholders from the quadruple helix, to create a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for the European blue bioeconomy. A synthesis of all findings from BlueBio has been published on the BlueBio website and was presented at the BlueBio Final meeting.
Ethics compliance has been evaluated for all BlueBio calls.
