Online marketplace connects agricultural actors to enable buying and selling of agricultural waste and raw materials to biorefineries for production of value-added, biobased products.

From farmers to consumers, vast amounts of agricultural and food waste are being generated throughout the whole supply chain. Around one-third of all food produced each year is wasted and a significant proportion of this is at the field and food processing levels. In Europe, around 90 million tonnes of food and 700 million tonnes of crops are wasted every year.

The Agrimax project launched an innovative online marketplace which enables crop producers, food processers and agricultural cooperatives to sell their waste as feedstock for biorefineries to create value-added, innovative products.

Coordinated and managed by IRIS Technology Solutions in Spain, the marketplace connected actors by enabling producers to share details of the produce or raw materials they have for sale (product type, stock amount, form of product, availability) and the buyer can define the details of the product which they require (product type, quantity, form of product) for use in biorefineries to valorise waste streams.

The marketplace was trialled in collaboration with two biorefineries in the project (one in Spain and the other in Italy), with the aim to maximise the sustainability and waste reduction in agriculture while providing continuous supply of feedstocks for the biorefineries, valorisation of waste streams which provide an additional source of income for producers, and creating new biobased compounds for the chemicals, food-packaging and agricultural sectors.

Recent years has seen green biorefinery research being undertaken in Ireland, with biorefineries having the potential to support the development of new business models and farmer diversification into the circular bioeconomy, changing the role of farmers from suppliers of biomass to producers of finished and semi-finished products.

Find out more about this innovation by contacting Róisín on roisin@erinn.eu. For more innovations like this, visit our Innovation Hub.