“There are currently four or five different leads in this area,” says Director Ton Voncken. It shows how well Limburg’s innovation ecosystem (of which BTC is a part) works. In fact it works so well that an entrepreneur from the largest seaweed farms in Malaysia knocked on the door a while back with all kinds of questions about application fields and innovative challenges involving his product. He had been tipped-off by an HAS graduate, and found the answer to his questions in Venlo, on the other side of the world.
Voncken also spoke recently to a Dutch entrepreneur who had developed a technique to extract functional protein from seaweed, to use it in human nutrition. “Here we have all the necessary expertise to conduct research into nutrition and nutrition claims, in the three laboratories of Maastricht University at Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo. But we look further. A mobile installation is also needed to harvest and refine the seaweed on-site. BTC partner Grassa developed a machine for grass and aquatic plants and had it built by a local company. This machine may also be suitable for harvesting seaweed. Here in the region we have a combination of high-quality food knowledge and high-tech manufacturing industry. That works.”
Also read the article in Agro&Chemistry about the collaboration between the Bio Treat Center and the Aachen-Maastrich Institute for Biobased Materials (AMIBM).
