BDC wins higher education innovation funding to boost collaboration with industry.
We have won a £400K I-UK project ‘High-Value Biorenewable Peptides from Proteinaceous Biomass’ in collaboration with Bell & Loxton Innovations, a highly innovative circular economy spin-out from a working oilseed rape farm in South Devon, and Thomas Swan & Company Ltd.
Bell and Loxton are award winning producers of cold pressed rapeseed oil, grown, pressed and bottled on the family farm with full traceability. With half the saturated fat of olive oil, naturally rich in omega 3 and a good source of Vitamin E it’s a healthy alternative to other culinary oils.
The collaboration will look at the peptides and their potential applications in the nutrition, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. This award was made possible by an earlier £20K University of York Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) award to the BDC, matched with £20K from Bell & Loxton, that pump primed the relationship.
We have also been successful with two other HEIF awards, the first was matched by Biome Bioplastics. They are one of the UK’s leading developers of intelligent, natural plastics. Their mission is to produce bioplastics that can challenge the dominance of oil-based polymers, and ultimately replace them completely. The second is to establish a small scale (10 litre) meat substitute production facility at the BDC with Marlow Foods / Quorn. These project streams demonstrate how this type and level of HEIF support is helping build strategic partnerships across the bioeconomy with the BDC and the University of York.
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We have worked on 1,500 bio-based projects to date
We have several ways to work with us, including business advisory programmes and self-funded commercial options. We even have the option for you to hire our state-of-the-art laboratory equipment and office space.
