Dendromass4Europe

Dendromass4Europe has the following objectives:

• The establishment and expansion of 2500 ha of dendromass crops (short rotation poplar plantations), including in marginal or currently unused agricultural land in rural areas of the Slovak Republic, Hungary and possibly the Czech Republic.
• The establishment of four new bio-based value chains based upon the separation of the bark from the poplar trunks and upon separately adding higher value to both raw materials
• Reduction of dendromass costs through the adaptation and optimisation of innovative harvesting/forwarding and storage systems
• Demonstration of the market introduction and the application of four New Bio-Based Materials (NBBM) corresponding with the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) 5:

NBBM 1 (wood-based) Functionally adapted lightweight board for furniture production (IKEA Industry Slovakia);

NBBM 2 (bark-based) Eco-fungicidal moulded fibre pulp (Pulpack sp., Poland) for the production of moulded fibre packaging for the computer industries

NBBM 3 (bark-based) Bark enriched Wood Plastic Composite (Energochemica, Slovakia)

NBBM 4 (bark-based) Wood-Plastic Granulate (Energochemica, Slovakia)

• Implementation of dedicated monitoring and applied-level research to ensure plantation quality, production stability, optimum poplar variety selection and risk avoidance
• Implementation of most recent research results for tailored feedstock and the improvement of bio-based materials in full market competitiveness with their fossil based counterparts
• Demonstration of the future chances, especially against the background of climate change, and the attractiveness of the dendromass cropping system to the European bio-based industries, land owners, farmers, the rural population, students, regional and state authorities and to other stakeholders by different partner networks
• Validation of the expected ecological

Dendromass4Europe (D4EU) will have the following impacts

• D4EU will turn at least 2500 ha of current marginal or unused land into cultivated land with SRC.
• A large number of farmers and rural land owners will directly benefit from the diversification and increase of revenues through their involvement in D4EU.
• The safety, quality and purity of new bio-based materials will be in line with EU legislation and proven to meet end-market requirements to facilitate future market access and commercialisation.
• Based on the above mentioned impact of D4EU plantations for the farmers’ income, the creation of new primary agricultural jobs can reliably be predicted. Mainly, the field work will be done by local people. This will maintain and extend the existing job opportunities in the respective rural areas.
• Documented evidence from biorefinery investors in building industrial assets near the new feedstock supply
• The dendromass feedstock from D4EU’s plantations will be harvested for 20 years in four five-year rotations. Clear proof for the suitability of the feedstock is given by the fact that three industrial partners have dedicated plans to valorise this biomass in separate value chains.
• D4EU will contribute to other Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that are targeted by the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda SIRA of the BBI JU (BIC 2013). KPI 1: The D4EU project harbours three industrial partners in an innovative bio-economy cluster. They will cooperate for the first time in order to implement innovative value chains based on dendromass supply and on the separate exploitation of the lightweight poplar wood and the poplar bark of Slovakian (Hungarian) origin (KPI 2)