The traditional colour industry was an important activity in Europe until the end of 20th century. It suffers now displacement to the developing world due to high labour costs as well as increasing production related environmental costs in Europe. As an answer to their problems (economics, lack of innovation, toxicity to human, no environmentally -friendly, non worker-friendly processes), an integrated process is proposed. This flagship project consists of a biotechnological approach covering three parallel objectives:
> To develop new bioremediation technology to detoxify coloured wastewaters.
> To develop new safe enzyme-assisted processes for the production of existing dyes.
> To create new molecules of dyes which are less toxic and synthesised biotechnologically for high added value markets. To face those breakthroughs, "SOPHIED" project establishes a partnership among 17 Sees, 7 Universities and 3 Research Centres from 10 countries (total EC budget of 6 258 000? and a total effort of 2641 person-months) with a financial networking plan deep rooted into regional and national funding. The project is led by high-technology SME, Wetlands Engineering, under the strong administrative support of the coordinator, the Catholic University of Louvain.The four years project is based on a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses the value chain from the industrial needs, development of biotechnological processes, engineering, up to technology transfer. Besides research activities, a strong structure are developed to manage innovation related activities, dissemination, demonstration activities, mobility, and training. New production models "based on knowledge" to replace "trial-error" will be proposed to low-RTD sectors in the value chain. It is expected that this will lead to a concrete evolution of the traditional colour industries towards high tech Sees, which will become more completive, innovative and sustainable.