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As the world marks Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day on 27 June, CBE JU celebrates the SMEs helping transform circular bio-based innovation into market-ready solutions.
Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are the backbone of Europe’s economy. They represent 99% of European businesses and provide jobs to more than 85 million people, making them crucial drivers of employment, competitiveness and innovation across Europe.
They are also essential to Europe’s circular bio-based economy transition. They bring innovation closer to the market, develop specialised technologies, connect with local and regional value chains and help create sustainable alternatives to fossil-based products.
CBE JU-funded projects connect SMEs with large companies, research organisations, universities, primary producers, public authorities and end users, giving smaller companies opportunities to validate technologies, test business models and demonstrate solutions at larger scale.
Across the CBE JU-funded project portfolio, SMEs represent 38% of all participants and receive 35% of the funding. But in CBE JU programme, SMEs are not only project partners. Around one quarter of CBE JU-funded projects are coordinated by SMEs, showing that smaller companies are taking leadership roles in complex European innovation projects. They are technology developers, innovation leaders and market builders. They play an important role particularly in bringing circular bio-based solutions to industrial scale, fostering market uptake.
The CBE JU 2025 call for project proposals confirms the continued attractiveness of the programme for SMEs. With a budget of €172 million, the call received 240 eligible proposals requesting more than €1.4 billion in total funding. SMEs represented 34% of all applicants, showing that smaller companies remain strongly engaged in Europe’s circular bio-based innovation ecosystem.
The strong SME interest in CBE JU calls confirms that CBE JU funding continues to meet their needs for innovation, growth and access to collaborative European value chains. The 2025 call attracted many new participants. Overall, 45% of applicants were newcomers to the programme, predominantly from industry and SMEs. This shows that CBE JU continues to reach beyond its established community and remains open and relevant to organisations entering the circular bio-based economy for the first time.
Nicoló Giacomuzzi-Moore, Executive Director, CBE JU
Helping SMEs move from innovation to market
SMEs often bring highly specialised technologies, niche expertise and entrepreneurial capacity to Europe’s circular bio-based industries. However, many smaller companies face challenges when scaling innovation, including access to finance, demonstration facilities, industrial partners, value chains and market opportunities.
CBE JU helps address these challenges through collaborative projects that connect SMEs with large companies, research organisations, universities, primary producers, public authorities and end users. This model gives smaller companies opportunities to validate technologies, test business models, demonstrate solutions at larger scale and strengthen their place in European industrial value chains.
Discover some of the innovative SMEs leading CBE JU-funded projects:
BIOWRAP, coordinated by German SME Papair GmbH, is developing a 100% paper-based alternative to plastic bubble wrap. The project is building a first-of-its-kind production facility for protective packaging based on cellulose and nanocellulose fibre bonding, replacing synthetic adhesives and supporting more circular packaging value chains.
At Papair, we want plastic protective packaging to become the exception in Europe, not the norm. CBE JU support through BIOWRAP gives us the capital and the partners to take our paper-based technology from a product already in the market to full industrial scale, and to get there faster than we ever could alone. That's how a circular, bio-based solution goes from promising to bankable – and onto Europe's loading docks.
Christopher Feist, CEO at Papair
WASTE2FUNC, with Amphistar’s participation, demonstrates how circular bio-based innovation can reach consumers through everyday products. The project developed new value chains to convert agricultural and industrial food waste into lactic acid and microbial biosurfactants for home and personal care applications. One concrete result was the launch of Ecover multi-surface and toilet cleaners made from food waste and sold in Delhaize supermarkets in Belgium. This example shows how underused waste streams can become functional ingredients for consumer products, supporting both circularity and market uptake.
CleanAlgae2Value, coordinated by Greek SME Solmeyea, is developing a scalable microalgae biorefinery process to produce food-grade, carbon-negative ingredients such as protein isolates, oils, natural pigments and starch. The project will validate these ingredients in food and bio-based packaging prototypes, showing how microalgae can support more sustainable value chains and help bring competitive bio-based products closer to the market.
CBE JU support is extremely important for Solmeyea because it allows us to move beyond laboratory and pilot-scale innovation and accelerate the industrial validation of microalgae-based, carbon-negative ingredients for food and packaging applications. Through CleanAlgae2Value, we aim to demonstrate how European biotechnology can transform CO₂ and microalgae into functional ingredients such as proteins, oils, pigments and starch, with the broader vision of helping decarbonise the way food is produced. For an SME like Solmeyea, this support goes far beyond funding: it is a strategic platform to scale innovation, strengthen collaboration across Europe and contribute to the EU’s wider ambition, reflected in the Draghi and Letta reports, to reinforce European competitiveness, resilience and biotech innovation.
Vasilis Stenos, Co-Founder & CEO at Solmeyea
SUSTAINEXT, coordinated by Spanish SME NATAC, is transforming an existing facility in Hervás, Extremadura, into a first-of-its-kind biorefinery for plant-based extracts and functional ingredients. The plant, to be inaugurated in autumn 2026, is designed to process 20,000 tonnes of agricultural sidestreams and medicinal and aromatic plants per year.
CBE JU support has given NATAC not only crucial financial backing, but also a European seal of excellence that validates our vision, strengthens our capacity to attract private investment and places us at the forefront of the circular bio-based transition. With SUSTAINEXT, we are building a first-of-its-kind biorefinery model for botanical extracts and functional ingredients that can inspire replication across other bio-based sectors. Rooted in a rural town in Extremadura, this project shows that green innovation can and must be driven from rural areas, positioning NATAC and SUSTAINEXT as a new innovation and technology hub that creates quality jobs, opens new opportunities for farmers and helps transform the region socially, economically and industrially.
Jose María Pinilla, Head of Innovation at NATAC and SUSTAINEXT Project Coordinator
SynoProtein, coordinated by Norwegian SME WAI Environmental Solutions, is developing a carbon-negative process that converts forest residues into single-cell proteins for fish feed, while also producing biochar for animal feed. The project has already optimised lab-scale processes close to targeted performance and completed pre-engineering designs for a future full-scale plant, showing its potential to create high-value, sustainable feed ingredients from low-value forest residues.
On Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day, CBE JU celebrates the small businesses making a big impact on Europe’s circular bio-based future.
