Adnkronos (Adnkronos) – Transforming waste from the industrial processing of tomatoes and olive oil into new raw materials for the chemical, food, cosmetics, and bioplastics industries, creating economic value directly in the regions where they are produced. This is the industrial perspective at the heart of the European Polymers-5B research project, presented at Ecomondo 2026, the international event dedicated to technologies for ecological transition and the circular economy, taking place at the Rimini Fiera.
The project, funded by the European Union with 5,6 million euros, has led to the development of a new biorefining technology that allows for the production of multiple products from the same stream of agri-food waste, progressively valorizing the various substances contained in the biomass.
Launched in 2024, the four-year Polymers-5B research project involves 12 European partners coordinated by the Technical University of Lisbon, Department of Bioengineering (IST-IBB).
Among these, NSBProject, one of the Italian partners, is an innovative SME specializing in technology transfer. Acting as an innovation broker, it analyzed the technology's industrial and economic prospects, identifying a potential business model for the development of new biorefineries in the agro-industrial areas of the Mediterranean, including Italy.
The results are illustrated in the scientific paper Circular Bioplastics from Mediterranean Waste: High-Performance Polymers via Cascaded Biorefinery and Enzymatic Polycondensation, by Luis Fonseca (Ist-Id), Riccardo Varotto and Andrea Jester (NSBProject), selected through the Ecomondo Call for Papers among the 27 contributions admitted for oral presentation in the strand dedicated to plastics, bioplastics and textiles.
The technology developed by the Portuguese research group Ist-Id/iBB and analyzed by NSBProject, instead of using waste to obtain a single product, progressively extracts different valuable components, reducing the amount of residual material: a so-called cascade biorefinery.
Lycopene, a natural pigment also used in the food and cosmetics industries, can be recovered from tomato processing waste. Olive pomace, the residue from oil production, can yield polyphenols, substances of interest for cosmetics and other industrial applications. The process also allows for the extraction of pectin, used primarily in the food industry as a thickener, and basic molecules for the production of new bio-based polyesters.
To obtain the latter, enzymes are used, which are biological catalysts that promote chemical reactions under less aggressive conditions than many traditional processes, limiting the use of chemicals and solvents. The trial has already reached the technological readiness level Trl 5, corresponding to validation of the technology in an environment relevant to its application. Pilot batches of 15 kilograms of bioactive compounds have been obtained, with the possibility of reusing the enzymatic catalyst.
Test results on the new polyesters are promising, although stiffness still needs to be improved to match the performance of some more advanced commercial bio-based materials. The goal is to develop alternatives to fossil-based polymers for use in sectors such as textiles, automotive, furniture, and technical materials.
The innovation presented at Ecomondo focuses primarily on the possibility of transforming this technology into an economically sustainable industrial model. Using the proprietary C-Tech Navigator technology analysis platform, NSBProject examined 128 scientific publications and mapped nine industrial and research players active in four technology families, comparing the Polymers-5B results with solutions already available on the market. The analysis shows that the individual substances obtainable from agri-food waste are already commercialized, and that eight of the nine players examined sell standardized products. The potential competitive advantage of the new technology therefore lies not so much in the introduction of a single new molecule, but in the ability to obtain multiple marketable products from a single process, fully valorizing the waste raw material.
To understand whether the biorefinery model can sustain itself on the market, NSBProject calculated the theoretical economic value of the products that can be obtained from one ton of waste: up to €633 for each ton of tomato waste; up to €1.457 for each ton of olive pomace. It's important to note that this isn't a net gain or profit for the companies. This figure represents the "gross value," or the maximum theoretical revenue that would be obtained by selling all the recoverable compounds at current market prices. Actual production costs, such as processing, energy, transportation, and marketing expenses, must still be subtracted from this estimate.
Many of the individual substances extracted (such as lycopene or polyphenols) are already available and sold on the market by other companies. The true strength of this technology is not the invention of a previously unseen product, but rather that a single sequential process allows for the extraction of multiple products in the same biorefinery, transforming waste into a veritable mini-catalogue of raw materials for cosmetics, food, and chemicals. The analysis identifies a possible solution to make the process competitive: building biorefineries directly at or near agri-food plants, avoiding the costs of transporting large quantities of low-value waste. In the model studied, the biorefinery would operate adjacent to a tomato processing plant, while the olive pomace would be supplied within a radius of approximately 25 kilometers.
Another factor concerns seasonality: tomato and olive processing lasts approximately five to six months of the year. To keep the plants active in the following months, the model allows for the use of conserved biomass or other agro-industrial waste, such as grape and citrus waste. This is a particularly attractive approach for Mediterranean regions characterized by concentrated and specialized agri-food supply chains, such as those of Italy's tomatoes, olive oil, and fruit and vegetable processing, particularly in Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, and Puglia.
"The challenge for the bioeconomy today is not just demonstrating that new materials can be obtained from agri-food waste, but building industrial models capable of competing on the market," explains Andrea Jester, co-founder of NSBProject. "With our proprietary research and analysis platform, C-Tech Navigator, we analyzed competing technologies, target markets, and potential revenue sources, identifying the biorefinery integrated into agri-food plants as a particularly promising model that can also be replicated in Italy. Ecomondo is an opportunity to initiate discussions with major Italian and Spanish agri-food processing operators, particularly those that process over 100 tons of raw materials annually, to jointly evaluate the technical and economic conditions required to test this model on an industrial scale."
"The most important result is having demonstrated the possibility of integrating the recovery of various valuable substances with the production of new bio-based materials, through enzymatic processes," comments Luis Fonseca, Ist-Id/iBB, scientific coordinator of the research activities. "The results achieved at pilot scale constitute a basis for the subsequent development of the technology and for evaluating its application in industrial contexts."
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