Finland Times

 

Spinnova Ltd has won the international bio-refinery competition with its new textile fibre production technology.

 

Spinnova's fibre yarn technology, which makes it possible to spin yarn directly from wood fibre, represents a breakthrough technology that can revolutionise both the textile and forest industries, and bring significant business activities in the future, according to the panel of judges.

 

The event was organised by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy, said a press release of the ministry issued on Tuesday.

 

Two other proposals that also received awards in the competition are Biovakka Suomi's concept for combining the production of bio-gas, nutrients, and transport fuel, and another by the Kemijärvi Consortium that incorporates novel Finnish technology for the production of new bio-materials and bio-chemicals.

 

"We are very pleased with the proposals that we got and the interest shown towards the competition. I hope that as many of the projects in the competition as possible will turn into investments, new business, and jobs in the coming years," observed Minister of Economic Affairs Jan Vapaavuori while presenting the prizes to the winners at an event in Helsinki on Tuesday.

 

The winner gets a prize of euro 100,000.

 

Spinnova Ltd is a research and product development company developing yarn thread technology that was launched at the Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT.

 

The Ministry of Employment and the Economy has assembled a funding group representing public entities to coordinate and help the three top proposals obtain public funding for the investment phase. 

 

A diverse array of proposals from different bio-economy areas took part in the competition. They varied in size from demonstration plants worth less than a million euros to bio-refineries requiring hundreds of millions of euros in investment. The combined value of investments of the entries is about euro 1.5 billion, according to the release.

 

The Ministry of Employment and the Economy is implementing the government's bio-economy, clean-tech, and digitalisation strategy for accelerating new areas for growth.

 

In June 2014 an international competition was launched as part of the bio-economy strategy to expedite the commercialisation of bio-economy innovations and the emergence of new bio-refineries in Finland.