Key principles to communicate your product sustainability information Buying sustainable products matters now more than ever, but when choosing them we often deal with difficult decisions. Should I buy a sustainable product that was imported from the other side of the world? Was this chocolate really produced with no child labour as the label claims? […]
Anteja’s digital transformation and outlook for 2022 The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of accelerating digital transformation. Many companies have recurred to digitalisation not only to ensure a better resilience but also to develop new forms of working practices (work from home). Besides, digitalisation contributes to a more sustainable economic recovery in the post-pandemic […]
Companies are under pressure to embrace value chain transparency. The upcoming European Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSDR), Due Diligence Directive and the consumer demand put a new perspective on this topic. It is no longer the question of how to optimise and make value chains more resilient but how to make them sustainable and transparent. […]
Anteja supported the formation of 2 new Ugandan clusters After having successfully set up the Moringa Cluster Uganda together with VDI/VDE-IT in June 2021, Anteja, VDI/VDE-IT and ProFound supported the establishment of two new Ugandan clusters: Fruit Juice Cluster Uganda and Natural Cosmetics Cluster Uganda. The initiative was led by the Uganda Small Scale Industries Association (USSIA), funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and […]
Africa can become a global player in food value chains with the use of technology A conversation with Mateja Dermastia on African agriculture East Africa is one of the most underestimated sources of healthy food and ingredients, says Mateja Dermastia, who works to bring more transparency in African agricultural value chains. Namely, the huge potential […]
European companies will soon need to account for social and environmental risks in their GVCs Due diligence legislation, addressing corporate human rights and environmental impacts, and promoting responsible business behaviour, is on the rise in Europe. Apart from France, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Great Britain, Germany has also approved a due diligence law earlier this […]
Resilience and sustainability of European bio-based value chains during pandemic The pandemic has had a big impact on our systems. Due to disrupted supply chains, producers have faced high competition for exporting goods and had to find inventive ways to transport goods. The effects of the crisis, however, differ per sector and company, having each […]
Project duration:
Project start date: 01-07-2020
Project end date: 31-12-2022
Funding/Budget
Overall: 2713796.5 EUR
ERDF Contribution: 2214155.21 EUR
IPA Contribution: 92571.8 EUR
ENI Contribution: 0 EUR
Danube regions and cities face major societal transitions regarding demographic change. The rural exodus is caused by better employment opportunities for the youth and the prospect of a better life in cities. The movement of labor leads to depopulated areas leaving an aging and increasingly unskilled population behind. However, regions can make a significant new beginning. But a multi-level participative governance approach and new institutional capacities are needed to pool existent excellent competencies and development potentials.
Co-creating future strategies to increase the attractiveness of rural areas is the key to give the youth new incentives to revive rural areas. Circular bioeconomy is used as a tool that promises to foster regional development: It is a concept focusing on the transition of a fossil-resource based economy towards an economy making use of sustainable production of biological resources and processes to develop new products, thus setting rural areas and their development into focus.
The concept catalyzes interdisciplinary cooperation also between different policy areas/levels to actively address demographic change, by enhancing value creation through new collaboration, business models and value chains raising the attractiveness to stay and even move to rural areas.
Long term goal of the project is to enhance the socio-economic status of the regions, contribute to environmental, climate and resource protection as well as foster development of rural areas. An ecosystem for systematic multi-level governance with actors from the interested public, academia, industry and political decision making will be developed.
That ecosystem gives space for co-creation and new forms of integrated urban-rural cooperation leading to increased institutional capacity to tackle demographic change. Thus, overcoming the persistent lack of engagement of societal actors in the political system by giving them ownership to address demographic change.
The project is part of joint efforts of the Government of Sierra Leone (Ministry of Finance) and the World Bank Group, within the initiative “Sierra Leone Economic Diversification Project (SLEDP)”. It aims to facilitate investment, growth of SMEs, and entrepreneurship in non-mining productive sectors in Sierra Leone, such as tourism.
The project focuses on helping Sierra Leone reduce the problem of plastic pollution. This is done in several stages. As a first step, we identified the economic sectors that contribute to plastic pollution the most. These sectors were assessed in terms of their potential to substitute, re-use or manufacture products from recycled plastics. Initial mapping points included, but didn’t limit to, healthcare, agriculture, hospitality, transport, and construction. This helped to identify and profile sectors that can stimulate the reduction of plastic pollution via regulatory changes concerning the practice of recycling, which leads to the development and production of alternative materials.
The project encompasses in-country interviews with focus groups, stakeholders, and entrepreneurial discovery workshops (EDW). It is also intended to create a Plastics Leadership Platform to further enable SMEs, companies, start-ups, NGOs and governments to contribute to solving plastic pollution challenges. The project does not just tackle pollution, but contributes to gender equality via the creation of career opportunities for women and girls in the fields of plastics manufacturing, re-use, and R&D.
The consortium, formed by Anteja ECG (SI) and VDI/VDE-IT (DE), and ManoCap (Sierra Leone), has had substantial experience in similar assignments related to the circular economy in Africa and globally. The involvement of local partners ensures participation of companies and plastic waste management stakeholders.
Partners: VDI/VDE-IT (DE), ManoCap (Sierra Leone)
Client: The World Bank Group
Date: January 2021 – June 2022
Project duration
Project start date: 1.10.2019
Project end date: 30.6.2022
Funding/Budget
Total eligible costs: 1.591.414 EUR
ERDF grant: 1.169.952 EUR
Ardia-Net aims to develop a multilevel, multinational and coherent Alpine RDI Area for cross-regional and interdisciplinary cooperation and implement a joint funding framework and pilot projects, addressing circular bioeconomy and health economy megatrends.
ARDIA-Net project is led by BIOPRO Baden-Wurttemberg and involves 7 other partners located in 6 different Alpine regions. ARDIA-Net tackles a common challenge to many Alpine Space (AS) regions: the excellent AS innovation hot spots operate in a disconnected way since there is a lack of a multilevel transnational governance for a cross-regional S3 approach. S3 across the AS relies on existing capacities in relevant priority areas, such as digitization, agro-food, health, materials, which represent huge synergy potentials at cross-regional level. For this reason, actors should cooperate transnationally along the value chains to have an impact and implement the macro-regional strategies, such as EUSALP.
The challenge is to create a Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) area which, other than the Interreg-program, addresses the regions’ specific interest in synchronizing and funding joint activities across regions. This can lead to a mutual benefit for the alpine regions, through a smart connection of S3.
Furthermore, the improvement of the macroregional cooperation can significantly enhance the growth of new cross-sectoral value chains in the fields of circular bioeconomy and health economy, which are based on critical mass of actors and investments.
ARDIA-Net aims to develop a multilevel, multinational and coherent Alpine RDI Area for cross-regional and interdisciplinary cooperation and implement a joint funding framework and pilot projects addressing CBH megatrends. Regional S3 are aligned through synergy diamonds developed in the S3-4AlpClusters project, allowing the identification of mutual benefits, highest potential for innovative products and services related to CBH and contributing to common EUSALP priorities (eg. advanced manufacturing or eHealth).
ARDIA-Net’s partnership is actively involved in regional policy deployment and is composed of actors of new CBH value chains. It allows the efficient synchronization of RDI calls, the alignment of relevant actors, leading to hands-on innovative projects covering entire new CBH value chains, from research to market. ARDIA will result in a ready-to-use funding environment and innovation beacons for future cooperation in S3-implementation.
