Scale-up Accel­er­at­or Net­work (SAN) to Empower Biotech Innovators

The Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant (BBEPP) SAN pro­gram addresses a crit­ic­al chal­lenge that many start-ups face: min­im­iz­ing risk and short­en­ing the time in the ​“val­ley of death”! And how? By provid­ing them with the tech­nic­al means to scale their pro­cesses. SAN con­nects start-ups with exper­i­enced, inde­pend­ent industry lead­ers, offer­ing them valu­able insights and sup­port and help­ing them nav­ig­ate the com­plex tech­nic­al jour­ney required to accel­er­ate their time to market.

What is the Scale-up Accel­er­at­or Net­work programme?

The Scale-up Accel­er­at­or Net­work is a pro­gramme that brings start-ups togeth­er with exper­i­enced industry experts who will provide an inde­pend­ent assess­ment and sup­port you in your scale-up ambi­tions. The pro­gramme focuses exclus­ively on indus­tri­al bio­tech­no­logy pro­cesses and the crit­ic­al tech­nic­al steps your start-up needs to take to accel­er­ate time to market.

SAN is a pro­gramme that focuses on the tech­nic­al out­put. This out­put is cre­ated in col­lab­or­a­tion with the experts and cus­tom­ised to your needs to drive your scale-up roadmap and reduce risk.

Some examples of what you can expect as a res­ult of your par­ti­cip­a­tion in the Scale-up Accel­er­at­or Network:

• Review of your pro­cess flow dia­gram and your mass and energy bal­ance
  Ana­lys­is of your raw and input materials
• Eval­u­ation of the robust­ness of your fer­ment­a­tion pro­cess for fur­ther scale-up
• Advice on the selec­tion of suit­able DSP units and their scalability
• Eval­u­ation of tech­nic­al-eco­nom­ic ana­lys­is and hotspots
• Advice on sup­ply chain and part­ner­ship strategy

The experts are exper­i­enced and recog­nised industry lead­ers in their field who have worked with, learnt from or are per­son­ally known. This exclus­ive pool of inde­pend­ent experts has been estab­lished to provide start-ups with con­sult­ing hours to ful­fil their spe­cif­ic needs.

The pro­gramme fees are €200/​hour. The dur­a­tion of the pro­gramme depends on the exper­t’s assess­ment of the work­load and is based on the start-up’s request. The estim­ated aver­age dur­a­tion and cost of the pro­gramme is 20 hours and €4,000. At the end of the con­sulta­tion with the expert, the budget spent (up to €4,000) will be cred­ited to BBEPP as a cred­it for pilot services.

*The cred­it of €4,000 is val­id for a pro­ject of at least €65,000 and is val­id for one year.

Who should apply?

The tar­get group are start-ups in the seed or Series A phase. The applic­a­tion should be based on ref­er­ences from incub­at­ors or cluster sup­port as well as the pre­vi­ous start-up fin­an­cing path. A clearly defined desired out­put men­tioned in the applic­a­tion must be presen­ted to one of the experts.

Net­work of experts

The SAN pro­gramme starts with three highly respec­ted industry lead­ers: Michael Helmut Kopf (formerly at BASF), Alex Pat­ist (Geltor) and Ignace Debonne. The experts are exper­i­enced and recog­nised industry lead­ers in their field who have worked with or learned from them. But this is just the begin­ning. BBEPP is act­ively build­ing an exclus­ive and con­stantly evolving pool of inde­pend­ent experts avail­able for con­sult­ing hours to ensure the best pos­sible fit with each start-up’s needs.

Fur­ther inform­a­tion on the SAN pro­gramme and how to register can be found here.