Duration:
36 months 2023/01/01 – 2025/12/31
Project total eligible budget:
2,955,553 EUR
Partner budget:
333.524,80 EUR (ERDFco-financing 266.819,84 EUR)
Interreg Baltijos jūros regiono programa 2021-2027
TETRAS
Project summary. In the project TETRAS (Technology transfer for thriving recirculating aquaculture systems in the Baltic Sea Region), public authorities trigger fish and shrimp farming on land, which reuses water from industries related to energy production and geothermal resources.
TETRAS aims to improve the economic and environmental sustainability of RAS by demonstrating how these systems can be placed strategically or combined with industrial processes to increase resource use efficiency while producing affordable and healthy food.
One process’s waste or residual is another process’s resource.
The TETRAS project addresses a challenge common to regions across the Baltic Sea Region: how to harmonise economic development with social and environmetal goals. Much of the excess water or energy used in industry is lost to the environment. What if we could capture these resources and use them for food production? Specifically, how can we use water in a smart way that balances the needs of industry with state-of-the-art food production systems? The solution is RAS: Recirculating Aquaculture Systems. On its own, RAS are expensive and energy-intensive. However, as industrial „add-ons”, RAS can be highly efficient methods of food production. For example, in combination with geothermal heat exchange, water re-use (e.g. so-called „technical” water) or agri-aqua symbioses like aquaponics. Besides food, RAS creates additional revenue streams, e.g. by-products for use in cosmetics, bioplastics, fertiliser, or biogas.
TETRAS will show how RAS can be placed in strategic geographic locations, or combined with industrial processes to increase efficiency, while producing affordable, healthy food. The partnership will co-develop regional pilots and standardised tools for municipalities to assess and monitor RAS applications and match them with suitable industries. These tools will allow public authorities to integrate RAS into regional development strategies, contributing to both sustainable waters and the transition to a circular economy in a win-win scenario.
Duration:
36 months. 2024.07.01 – 2027.06.30
Total Project Budget:
1,662,548.10 EUR
Partner budget:
300,000.00 EUR
(ERDF co-financing 240 000.00 EUR)
Interreg South Baltic programme 2021-2027
SMEBeyond
South Baltic SMEs Advancing Beyond Borders
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the blue and green sectors are vital to economic growth in the South Baltic region. However, they face a significant challenge: going international. Only 34% of them engage in global business since it is complex to perform an international expansion due to legal framework, market insight, and financial difficulties.
The ‘South Baltic SMEs Advancing Beyond Borders’ (SMEBEYOND) is a cross-border Interreg project that will support SMEs in sectors such as renewable energy, sustainable urban development, water and waste management, food packaging, plasma technology, and maritime to get international and have successful ventures. In collaboration with partners from Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and Lithuania, the project will facilitate various matchmaking sessions to support SMEs in establishing international contacts.
The project aims to cultivate a competitive business ecosystem in the South Baltic Region through cross-border collaboration with SMEs, policymakers, investors, NGOs, and business networks. With support from Interreg South Baltic, it will run from 2024 to 2027 and has a budget of 1.6 million euros.
Funding: The project is co-funded by Interreg South Baltic with funds from the European Regional Development Fund. It aims to unlock the potential of the South Baltic’s blue and green growth through cross-border cooperation between local and regional actors.
Duration:
48 months 2024/03/01 – 2028/02/29
Project total eligible budget:
4,900,000 EUR
Partner budget:
212,583 EUR (ERDFco-financing 42,517 EUR)
Erasmus+ programme
INVESTech
Project summary. The ICT sector is growing rapidly and constantly evolving, creating a strong need for new skills and innovation. However, according to the OECD, current VET programmes often struggle to keep up with these changes and do not always provide students with the skills and opportunities they need to succeed in ICT jobs in industry. The fourth and fifth industrial revolutions are key drivers of the changing role of VET, as they are shaping the content and form of new jobs, skills and occupational requirements. “INVESTech aims to promote the innovation potential of VET in participating countries by fostering cooperation between education, labour market and other stakeholders; facilitating skills development and the use of innovative technologies; promoting green transition and social inclusion; and providing opportunities for transnational cooperation and the exchange of best practices, thus ensuring that VET can play a key role in supporting innovation, skills development, green transformation and social inclusion.
Goals. The aim of the project is to support the creation of an international cooperation platform and the development of Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in five European countries: Slovakia, Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Lithuania.
Results and outcomes. INVESTech will foster the creation of CoVEs in five European regions (Košice in Slovakia, Attica in Greece, Sofia in Bulgaria, Nicosia in Cyprus and Klaipėda in Lithuania), involving a five-level innovation spiral (Q2IH) framework that promotes partnerships between academia, industry, the public sector, civil society and other sectors. By fostering collaboration between different types of stakeholders, the project aims to support the alignment of CoVE with regional smart specialisation strategies focusing on sustainable development and innovation. More specifically, INVESTech will develop a bottom-up approach to vocational skills, involving a wide range of stakeholders at regional level, building on, expanding or creating new skills ecosystems, thus enabling CoVE to rapidly adapt skills provision to changing economic and social needs.
Duration:
36 months. 2023.09.15 – 2026.09.14
Total Project Budget:
1,680,450.00 EUR
Partner Budget:
224,900.00 EUR
(ERDF co-financing 44,980.00 EUR)
Interreg South Baltic programme 2021-2027
DigiTechPort2030
About the project. Small and medium-sized ports (SMSPs) contribute to regional development, being a regional capacity and main actor of Blue Growth with a high potential to enhance regional growth through strong and sustainable connections with the hinterland. However, SMSPs tend to suffer from lower trade volumes and freight turnovers compared to bigger seaports, but also face economic, geographic, and environmental disadvantages. Moreover, SMSPs are highly underrepresented when it comes to EU Smart Growth as well as Regional Innovation Strategies on Smart Specialisation (RIS3).
Nevertheless, the term Smart Ports is increasingly used in economic and scientific debates without a unified definition for what a smart port actually is. Whereas one stream argues a smart port needs to be fully automated, the focus on SMSPs reveals smart ports being surely digital, but also resource-efficient, environmentally friendly and innovation-driven.
Standardised solutions or technologies are not working in the majority of SMSPs of the South Baltic Area, as requirements and conditions at the port sites are highly individual and partly unique. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions for SMSPs. Thus, it is necessary to develop a Smart Port Strategy particular for SMSPs, which can be adapted to individual requirements and provides the most applicable innovations, being digital, environmental-friendly, socially beneficial and economic – or in one word: smart.
The envisaged project is in line with SO1.2. and requires the seed money funding to set up the Smart Port Strategy for SMSPs as a validated concept for further project development.
Duration:
24 months. 2023.10.01 – 2025.09.30
Total Project Budget: 749,922.34 EUR
Partner Budget:
67,196 EUR (ERPF co-financing 13,440 EUR)
Horizon Europe –the framework programme for research and innovation (2021-2027) – EMFAF
Cool Blue Baltic
About the project. A two-year project that aims to create a network of Regenerative Ocean Farming (ROF) initiatives.
Expected results: The project will assess the interest and feasibility of establishing new RAO sites through multi-stakeholder co-assessment workshops, while developing six ongoing collaboration frameworks (key deliverables ) to create favorable conditions for regenerative ocean farming, including measures to monitor regenerative ocean impacts on farms in Baltic water ecosystems. The project will consist of eight exploitation events in participating Baltic Sea region countries to initiate a public international movement to engage coastal communities in ecological restoration and regenerative ocean farming initiatives.
Application/Relevance: COOL BLUE BALTIC will provide concrete examples of ecosystem restoration, viable business models and social innovation to reorient future fishermen and/or farmers to diversify their income through regenerative aquaculture (i.e. regenerative ocean farming).
Duration:
36 months 2023/01/01 – 2025/12/31
Project total eligible budget:
4,6 mln EUR
Partner budget:
145.303,20 EUR (ERDF co-financing 116.242,56 EUR)
Interreg Baltijos jūros regiono programa 2021-2027
Blue Supply Chains
About the project. Ports serve as economic backbones of BSR regions. At the same time, emissions from freight transport and port activities contribute highly to pollution. Even though emissions have many different sources, a major share is linked to port activities and transport chains. Port authorities (PA) are only responsible for a fraction of those activities, but nevertheless are an important player when it comes to the implementation of emission reduction measures. Their limited knowledge which role they could take to influence emission reduction and unsatisfactory cooperation hinder the implementation of effective greening measures, though.
BSC will provide a three-pillar approach on how PAs can support greening process in port operation (electrification of handling equipment), by providing alternative fuels (bunkering & charging strategy) and by pushing to set-up green transport chains (combined transport). Solutions will be jointly developed, tested in selected ports, evaluated, adjusted & transferred to other ports. Cooperation with research, private enterprises & business support organisations ensures the involvement of end users, high practicability of results & market uptakes in the long run. Umbrella organisations as Baltic Ports Organisation support the process. National Ministries (as PPs & AOs) will use the solutions to adopt their national emission reduction plans & by that creating the framework conditions for PAs to play an appropriate role in the greening process.
Duration:
36 months. 2024.07.01 – 2027.06.30
Total Project Budget:
1,452,835.00 EUR
Partner Budget:
228,500.00 EUR
(ERDF co-financing 182,800.00 EUR)
Interreg South Baltic programme 2021-2027
BePacMan
Better Paper Packaging Management
BePacMan project focuses on extending the life cycles of paper packaging through cross-sector and cross-border approaches to reuse in the South Baltic region.
The partner countries will develop sustainable concepts, solutions and business models for this purpose and for structurized support to SMEs. Collaborating with important stakeholders such as e-commerce, logistics and waste management companies as well as technology providers and political decision-makers, new economically and ecologically sustainable business models for the reuse of packaging are to be developed. The packaging should remain in its shape for as long as possible, thus avoiding the generation of paper waste by reusing the paper packaging to extend the life cycle of the packaging materials, and facilitate the shift from linear to circular resource use. At the same time, the energy and water costs for processing the paper can be further optimized through recycling and climate-damaging emissions can be reduced.