Then and Now: 120 Bioeconomy Pioneers look at yesterday, today, inspirations and challenges

Karen Robins

Then: In 2007 I had been working for over 20 years in the Biotechnology R&D group at Lonza AG (global Life Science company) in Switzerland using biocatalysis and fermentation to synthesise Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, nutraceuticals and agrochemicals.

Now:  Today I am back home in Australia and I have started my own consulting business, Sustain Biotech. The main emphasis of the company is value adding to waste from agricultural and food industry residues by identifying active biological ingredients in the waste, assessing the compounds market value and potential and recommending processes for their isolation. This work is done in conjunction with experts at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), who carry out high quality and successful R&D in these areas. I am also lucky enough to be an adjunct professor at QUT where I engage with the students and have the opportunity to pass on some of my experience in Biotechnology.

Inspirations: The bioeconomy is gaining momentum globally and transforming the energy and chemical manufacturing industries with exciting new technologies. Bioethanol, bioproducts and advanced biofuel fermentations using corn, sugar cane or agricultural residues as feedstocks is one area that I am quite passionate about. These technologies are bringing jobs to regional areas and promoting investment. In the long term the bioeconomy will help make the world a better place for future generations. “There are many challenges facing the advanced bioeconomy. A very important aspect is the long term stability of government policies supporting the bioeconomy, which encourages investment in the sector.

As long as there are realistic expectations about the cost and the time required to commercialise a process the problems of scale-up and the Valley of Death are surmountable as there are now many examples of successfully commercialised processes. There is also excellent information sources, like the Biofuel Digest, that continually updates the sector on emerging and successful bioprocesses including the problems these companies face during commercialisation and how these problems are solved.

Challenges:  Supply chains are another important aspect of commercialisation but the trend of building new plants in the vicinity of established bioethanol plants, which are located close to feed stocks, have supply chains in place and also access to trained personnel solves these problems, too.”