Dear readers,

Here we come with fresh updates from our B-Ferst project.

One of the big news is that the second field campaign in Italy and Spain are progressing, and 3 new campaigns recently started in Portugal and Poland. The aim is to test the fertilisers under different conditions and with different crops.

In Huelva, Grupo Fertiberia is building a demo plant dedicated to bio-waste treatment and nutrients recovery, which should be incorporated into the fertiliser production plants and partially substitute the non-renewable raw materials.

Aqualia has mapped and analysed almost 400 hot spots of raw materials, throughout 8 European countries. The data analysed has created a model to optimise the raw material supply of the future fertiliser plant. 

AgFutura is conducting a survey on farmers behaviour related to switching from conventional to bio-based fertilisers. If you’re an agricultural expert, please provide your contribution!

Finally, VITO has been working on the environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC), to fine-tune the results of both assessments. Next, they’ll include the required inputs for fertiliser application and the crop yield as observed during the field trials. 

If you missed our first training you can watch it here, and more webinars are coming in the next months.

Let me thank you once again for your interest in our project and invite you to follow our social networks and to take a closer look at the latest news from the world of B-Ferst. 

Enjoy your reading!

Javier Brañas Lasala
B-Ferst Project coordinator

“In difficult times the bioeconomy is not a luxury, but a real opportunity”

The prices of fertilisers jumped by +116% in one year. While the Ukraine war and the energy crisis are stressing the urgency of ending Europe’s dependence on Russian imports, an EU-funded project aims at creating new circular and bio-based chains in agriculture. “The time to act is now,” says the father of the bioeconomy, Christian Patermann. “It is not a luxury, but an opportunity”.

Bio-waste, an underused treasure

The new Spanish demo plant of Grupo Fertiberia in Huelva will turn bio-waste into fertilisers to contribute more widely to the circular bioeconomy.

The following poster was presented at the SETAC Europe 25th LCA Symposium. The poster summarises the life cycle assessment that is carried out during the B-Ferst project.

It shows the objective, methodology and impacts to be considered in this consequential LCA and preliminary results of some of the fertilising products under study.