The Vertech Group, an international environmental engineering company based, in France is a project partner of the AQUABIOPRO-FIT consortium. Their Technical Leader, Dr. Erasmo Cadena explains how they are contributing to the AQUABIOPRO-FIT project and the benefit of projects funded by the EU.

Vertech Group (VTG) is an international environmental engineering team, leading organizations towards sustainable profitability. VTG is specialized in the assessment of environmental and socioeconomic impacts and environmental transformation methods and principles, such as circular economy and eco-design.

Our team consists of highly qualified, multicultural and multidisciplinary people who work with state-of-the-art software and tools. This has allowed VTG to gain a lot of experience with early innovation technologies.

Given its expertise in feasibility assessment and life cycle thinking, VTG is leading the activities related to the techno-economic, environmental and social assessments. As well as the identification of regulatory and health and safety issues related to the AQUABIOPRO-FIT project. The objective of these tasks is to validate the project approach from a technical and sustainability point of view. In brief, theses assessments will help to identify the environmental, economic and social benefits of the processes and products developed during the project. In addition, the outcomes obtained through these studies, will be used to calculate the carbon footprint reduction of the considered bio-based opportunities compared with state-of-the-art processes (one of the objectives of the AQUABIOPRO-FIT project).

AQUABIOPRO-FIT is a very innovative and challenging project that aims to valorize the aquaculture and fishery side streams into nutritional supplements for fitness and health. It takes a circular economy approach that is very much aligned with our research interests. The sustainability assessment of circular economy projects is part of our targets, because we are interested in identifying the possible benefits and the profitability of this kind of models, focusing on the reduction of the carbon footprint and promoting the resources efficiently by closing the loop.

EU projects provide the opportunity to work in a collaborative environment with a group of experts, in order to address current or future concerns. In the case of AQUABIOPRO-FIT, all project partners provide their extensive expertise with the aim of finding innovative solutions for valorizing aquaculture and fishery side streams, promoting the circular economy in this field and developing novel nutritional supplements. The high-level research conducted in EU projects allows problem statements to be assessed at various levels, for example from technical to market level, including a sustainability assessment and feasibility analyses. These types of initiatives reinforce the EU’s objective to strengthen collaboration in areas such as bio-based industries.

The Consortium consists of 3 universities, 1 large company, 3 SMEs, 1 NGO and 4 research institutes from 7 European countries. Find out more about Vertech and the other AQUABIOPRO-FIT project partners in the links below.

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As of February 2021, ARDITEC replaced VERTECH within the AQUABIOPRO-FIT project. Therefore ARDITEC is responsible for feasibility studies that include technical, economic, environmental, social and legal aspects

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