Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Microalgae As a Green source for Nutritional Ingredients for Food/Feed and Ingredients for Cosmetics by cost-Effective New Technologies

Project description

For successful microalgae production

In addition to being rich in vitamins, soluble fibres, proteins, lipids and minerals, algae, including microalgae and seaweed, also serve as abundant sources of minerals and vitamins. Their unique properties make them ideal solutions for sustainable food ingredients, animal feeds and cost-effective cosmetics. However, algae are currently utilised in limited quantities due to their high production costs, which hinder their competitiveness. The EU-funded MAGNIFICENT project aims to address this by offering innovative products and applications to fully leverage the opportunities presented by algae. To achieve this goal, MAGNIFICENT will enhance and optimise production processes, develop and validate new product formulations, and conduct thorough chain evaluation, market assessment, socio-economic impact assessment and life-cycle assessment.

Objective

Today there are only market opportunities for high value applications due to production costs, which are still too high to make microalgae a competitive feedstock for commodities. There is presently a large production capacity for a limited number of microalgae strains in Europe. However, the number of concrete products and market applications is still limited. The enlargement of current market applications for high-value microalgae ingredients will lead to new business opportunities, industrialize the technology and provide the knowledge and experience required to enter the medium- low value market within 5-10 years.
MAGNIFICENT will expand the range of commercial products and their market volume substantially and in a sustainable manner. The overall objective of the project is to develop and validate a sustainable and economically feasible new value chain based on cultivation and processing, with the aim to transform microalgae biomass into valuable ingredients for food, aquafeed and cosmetics applications. Development and validation of new product formulations of microalgae are included in the project
To achieve this, optimization will be done: 1) Upstream, cultivation related processes via adaptation and selection of algae varieties, improvement of growing conditions and target product concentration in the cell and 2) downstream process steps (separation, extraction, purification) in order to achieve the overall aim to maximise the production of compounds of interest (phospholipids rich in omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA and fucoxanthin as main molecules). The work will be supported by chain evaluation, market assessment, socio-economic impact assessment and LCA. Specific attention will be paid to the requirements of the existing EU regulatory framework.
The MAGNIFICENT consortium has 16 partners from 7 EU countries incl. 10 SME's, 3 LE's, 1 University and 2 RTO's, and comprises commercial partners in the entire value chain and the 3 target markets.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

BBI-RIA - Bio-based Industries Research and Innovation action

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-BBI-JTI-2016

See all projects funded under this call

Coordinator

WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 377 040,00
Address
DROEVENDAALSESTEEG 4
6708 PB Wageningen
Netherlands

See on map

Region
Oost-Nederland Gelderland Veluwe
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 377 040,00

Participants (17)

My booklet 0 0