On the last day of September, the first lustrum of Natural Fibertastic was celebrated in Bergen op Zoom, The Netherlands. Tt will certainly not be the last, given the many successes that have been achieved in the field of naural fibres. On the contrary: there will even be a new edition in November this year, in Flanders, Belgium.

The bioeconomy is flourishing in Europe. Biorefinery initiatives are sprouting up all over the place; the counter now stands at about 2,000. Some initiatives are unique to a location, but many have a supra-regional reach or offer opportunities for replication elsewhere in Europe. The Bioeconomy Pilot of the Vanguard Initiative stimulates this development by directly supporting various democases.

In almost 4 billion years of evolution, nature has developed efficient and sustainable solutions for applications that people still struggle with in 2021. Such as the in-situ measurement of fluid flows in a pipeline, mixer or bioreactor vessel. Fish, frogs and seals have perfect biological sensors for this.