Category: News

SINTEF Ocean will co-ordinate the SmartChain project and the partners are Seagarden AS in Norway, Technical University of Denmark, Beia Consult International in Romania, University of Iceland, Brim and MarkMar in Iceland. The project launched in October 2021 and will be run until October 2024 with a budget of €1.5 million. SmartChain is a BlueBio COFUND project.

The primary objective of SmartChain is to develop approaches and tools for sustainable utilisation, production planning, logistics optimisation, and traceability to facilitate the transfer of bio-resources in fisheries and aquaculture value chains.

The project seeks to bring about smart solutions for advancing supply systems in blue bioeconomy value chains. Automated sorting and quality characterisation, together with optimising production planning will reduce waste from processing while the blockchain technology will increase the transparency in the supply chain. The project will also look into upscaling the production of high-value marine ingredients from co-streams from the pelagic industry. Sustainability indicators and circularity criteria will be applied to assess the performance of the system solutions.

SmartChain has defined three case studies from aquaculture and fisheries value chains, including Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Romania. Industry actors representing their sectors will be involved in the implementation and application of the development of technologies and models through the case studies, achieving a TRL ranging between 4 and 6. In addition, an advisory group will contribute with insights into the existing bottlenecks and technology gaps in the bioeconomy sector.

The SmartChain simulation framework will enable the assessment of the end-to-end effects and potentials of the project and enlighten policy makers, businesses, investors, entrepreneurs, institutions, stakeholders, and citizens about potential trade-offs.

SmartChain will contribute to capacity building by creating awareness, opening opportunities for academic researchers and reaching out to a broad spectrum of stakeholders across multiple countries.

Stay tuned for more news and developments within the SmartChain project online and follow SmartChain on social media. LinkedIn and Twitter.

MarkMar Work Package Leader for Dissemination and Communication in VALUMICS H2020 under GA 727234.

VALUMICS stands for value chain dynamics and is a research project funded by the EU H2020 programme. VALUMICS will enable decision makers to evaluate policy impact on food value chains.

The project started in 2017 and will run until 2021. The consortium has 19 different partners from 14 European projects and two from Asia, Vietnam and China. The funding from the EU grant is €6 million.

MarkMar leads the proposal writing and managing the consortium drive to secure a large H2020 grant for geothermal research. 

EU fund of 20M€ secured for deep drilling research and development. The DEEPEGS project no. 690771 “Deployment of Deep Enhanced Geothermal Systems for Sustainable Energy Business”

The European Commission, through the Horizon 2020 framework programme, has granted the DEEPEGS project consortium a research fund of approximately 20 M€ for research and development on geothermal energy utilization on the Reykjanes peninsula in the South East of France. The DEEPEGS project is a four year project led by HS Orka, Iceland, in cooperation with other partners from Iceland, France, Germany, Italy, and Norway. About 45 % of the grant is allocated to various research in relation to the drilling and testing operation at the demonstration site in Reykjanes and 55% to various drilling and permeability improvement operations in South East France.
The DEEPEGS project will be testing stimulating technologies for deep EGS development, and intends to deliver new innovative solutions and models for wider deployments of EGS reservoirs for significant amounts of geothermal power across Europe. The project will demonstrate the capabilities of EGS for widespread exploitation of high enthalpy systems, by testing the deep roots beneath the existing hydrothermal field at Reykjanes, with temperature up to 550°C, and in very deep hydrothermal reservoirs in sedimentary basins at Valence and Vistrenque in France with temperatures up to 220°C. The DEEPEGS project is coordinated by HS Orka hf [http://hsorka.is/english/default.aspx].

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On 1 May 2015 a new project no. 635188 — SUCCESS — H2020-BG-2014-2015, with the title “Strategic Use of Competitiveness towards Consolidating the Economic Sustainability of the european Seafood sector” was kicked-off. [http://www.success-h2020.eu/]. MarkMar was a core member of the proposal writing team and is participating as the leader of WP9 Co-creation and Stakeholder platform. The SUCCESS project will run for three years, and the total grant secured is 5M€.

The coordinator is Université de Bretagne Occidentale (UBO) – France.

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On 1 February 2015 a new project no. 643636 — Sound of Vision — H2020-PHC-2014-2015, with title “Natural sense of vision through acoustics and haptics”  was kicked-off. This grant was secured with proposal support and editorial advice from MarkMar, and the grant amount awarded is 4 M€. The project is coordinated by the University of Iceland [http://www.soundofvision.net/].

BONAFIDE – New Eurostars innovation project for food sector transparency

The project is a collaborative effort of three SMEs, lead by MarkMar ehf in Iceland in collaboration with the Icelandic start-up company iMonIT ehf, and ASSIST SOFTWARE SRL in Romania. The project is part of the Eurostars program that is supported by 33 European countries to facilitate innovation for Small and Medium sized Entererprises (SME). The Icelandic part of the grant funding for the BONAFIDE project comes from Tækniþróunarsjóður.

Today, consumers consider several factors, besides cost, when making buying decisions such as origin, production practices and environmental impacts. Currently, no commercial solution exists that integrates whole supply chain, interoperable information based on traceability, and environmental sustainability of food products that enables communication of this information to the end consumers of the food products. Current systems mainly focus on delivering information to the responsible supply chain partners directly involved with the trade and transport logistics.

The BONAFIDE mobile application developed in this project will enable access to the supply chain data made available in the Business Cloud System (iM-BCS), which is being developed by partner iMonIT. This data is being pushed into the iM-BCS by primary food producers regarding their individual food product specifications, processes, origins of raw materials and ingredients, and critical traceability and sustainability information attached for each product lot delivered into the supply chain. Thus, this EUROSTARS project creates the direct linking of critical information of interest to the consumers to establish and maintain trust and transparency in the receiving end of the chain. Furthermore, the mobile application (the BONAFIDE APP) will be designed to allow consumers to create their own profiles containing information suiting their particular interests and needs, like e.g. requirements based on their preferences, such as organic, fair trade, allergies, religion or specific food niches defined by themselves. Consumers will thus be empowered to explore the products, their provenance of origin, sustainability criteria etc., and furthermore share the information and opinions about the products they have purchased.

The BONAFIDE solution is built on top of an iMonIT designed Business Cloud for Sustainable Food Supply Chains (iM-BCS), which enables enterprises of any size to integrate smart tools for whole supply chain traceability for market information transparency. The solution provides clients with access to traceable market intelligence enabling enhanced, trust-based trade opportunities, giving buyers and traders further down a supply chain access to real-time information on the product they are buying/trading. The iM-BCS integrates smart tools for whole chain traceability using the business cloud as the data medium. The flow of information and data analytics from product suppliers to the final buyers can be made accessible to the consumers through appropriate data layering and a consumer friendly mobile application, i.e. the BONAFIDE APP.

MarkMar ehf is a founding member in iMonIT ehf, a start up company founded 12 January 2012. University of Iceland and collaborators from the ASCS research group are also founding members. Visit the company web site for more information, www.imonit.is.