The "Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Initiative" calls on industry and science to form strategic alliances along value chains. The strategic alliances should be under the leadership of a company. A decisive aspect of a strategic alliance is the linking of partners with a coherent objective. Within a strategic alliance, research and development projects that build on each other in a modular fashion should be defined and realised.
The aim of the funded projects should be to develop innovative processes or products for industrial applications using biotechnological methods. Of particular interest are industrial applications that can be replaced by biotechnological processes or products in the medium term ("biologisation of industry").
In addition to sectors such as the food, chemical, paper and pharmaceutical industries, in which biological processes are already being used, funding is generally open to all branches of industry.
The "Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Initiative" is a nationwide expansion of the previous "BioIndustry2021" funding programme, which created regional structures and expertise in industrial biotechnology. In addition to technical R&D projects, measures to promote implementation can also be supported.
Commercial companies based and utilising results in Germany are eligible to apply. Within a strategic alliance, universities, universities of applied sciences, non-university research institutions as well as state and federal institutions with research tasks are also eligible to apply.
Alliances interested in funding can submit an expression of interest by 1 June of each year until 2015 and submit a fully developed outline within the following 12 months. Alliances that have been assessed as positive will be invited to submit formal funding applications for the alliance's individual R&D projects.
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