The bio­tech­no­lo­gic­al pro­duc­tion and pro­cessing meth­ods estab­lished by my chair are suit­able for pro­du­cing indus­tri­al quant­it­ies of silk mater­i­al that can be used in many areas of tech­no­logy. How­ever, this has only been pos­sible in recent years with innov­at­ive part­ners. IBB plays a key role in this, as it helps us to get in touch with cus­tom­ers, part­ners and com­pet­it­ors loc­ally, e.g. with­in the frame­work of IBB’s net­work­ing events. IBB is an import­ant inter­face that gives us access to indus­tri­al bio­tech­no­logy from with­in the uni­ver­sity. That is why we have been a mem­ber of the asso­ci­ation for many years.

Due to both its net­works and its events and inde­pend­ent sup­port ser­vices, IBB Net­zwerk GmbH offers an excel­lent plat­form for identi­fy­ing part­ners and fin­an­cing solu­tions and thus shift­ing high-risk R&D&I pro­jects into a suf­fi­ciently prom­ising and bear­able eco­nom­ic cor­ridor. Through IBB, new innov­a­tions, tech­no­lo­gies and products are thus cata­lysed, secur­ing the long-term future not only of mk2, but also of Bav­aria as a busi­ness location.

The use of bio-based raw mater­i­als and the applic­a­tion of bio­tech­no­lo­gic­al pro­cesses usu­ally turn out to be a more sus­tain­able solu­tion than fossil resource con­sump­tion and chem­ic­al pro­cesses. For this reas­on, we have been involved for many years as a mem­ber of the asso­ci­ation and in the IBB sub-net­works. First and fore­most is the ​“BioPlastik” cooper­a­tion net­work. Togeth­er with oth­er com­mit­ted com­pan­ies and insti­tu­tions from this net­work, such as Jowat SE, Unaver­a­Chem­Lab GmbH and oth­ers, we have been able to launch sev­er­al pro­jects and thus advance the devel­op­ment of bio-based poly­mers and plastics. In addi­tion to the ongo­ing pro­ject and net­work­ing oppor­tun­it­ies dur­ing the pro­ject ini­ti­ation phase, we also appre­ci­ate the excel­lent pro­ject com­mu­nic­a­tion provided by Pro­fess­or Zorbas’ team, which we had already integ­rated into our know­ledge and res­ults com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­jects for experts and the public.

We have known the IBB for many years, as it sup­por­ted us, among oth­er things, when we settled in Bav­aria. Fur­ther­more, we are a mem­ber of the Cluster for Indus­tri­al Bio­tech­no­logy, the Förderver­ein, as well as the ZIM innov­a­tion net­work ​“Sus­Mat — Sus­tain­able Mater­i­als” and the estab­lished net­work ​“UseCO2”. Our exper­i­ence of work­ing with IBB on sev­er­al pro­jects, net­works and ser­vice con­tracts has been very pos­it­ive. IBB is an extremely import­ant play­er in the ini­ti­ation of fund­ing pro­jects, sup­ports the part­ners in the form­a­tion of pro­ject con­sor­tia as well as in the applic­a­tion for fund­ing and is also an import­ant con­tact and sup­port­er after­wards. This makes IBB an indis­pens­able part of the Bav­ari­an indus­tri­al bio­tech­no­logy land­scape. We sup­port every effort by IBB to con­tin­ue and expand its business.

New con­tacts, assist­ance in acquir­ing new pro­jects and numer­ous use­ful events have brought us and IBB togeth­er. Par­tic­u­larly in the still young ZIM net­work ​“Sus­Mat”, which is man­aged by IBB, we were able to estab­lish suc­cess­ful col­lab­or­a­tions and start work­ing togeth­er with an indus­tri­al part­ner after a very short time thanks to the pro­fes­sion­al and fast way of work­ing. For these reas­ons, we are a mem­ber of the IBB and appre­ci­ate the valu­able work.

FABES Forschungs-GmbH is an SME that has been a mem­ber of the Indus­tri­al Bio­tech­no­logy Cluster for many years, as well as in the vari­ous net­works of IBB Net­zwerk GmbH. FABES has par­ti­cip­ated in vari­ous pro­jects in dif­fer­ent work­ing groups and has achieved good research res­ults with the ana­lyt­ic­al data obtained. IBB has always sup­por­ted us in many ways, such as the oppor­tun­ity to net­work, the hand­ling of research pro­jects, inform­a­tion about fund­ing meas­ures and much more. IBB occu­pies an essen­tial pos­i­tion and thus a region­al and supra-region­al sig­ni­fic­ance for indus­tri­al bio­tech­no­logy in Bav­aria and beyond.

As the region­al asso­ci­ation of Bav­ari­an mills, the Bay­erischer Müller­bund e.V. is a long-stand­ing mem­ber of the Indus­tri­al Bio­tech­no­logy Cluster.
We would like to emphas­ise that we feel well rep­res­en­ted and rep­res­en­ted in this cluster with our con­cerns. Through the IBB net­work, we have suc­ceeded in ini­ti­at­ing import­ant research pro­jects that hold out the pro­spect of prom­ising util­isa­tion of domest­ic mill by-products and non-util­is­able resid­ual mater­i­al streams from the milling industry.
We are very grate­ful to the IBB Net­zwerk GmbH team for this extraordin­ary sup­port in many respects, because our mem­ber­ship offers not only per­son­al sup­port but also the oppor­tun­ity for net­work­ing, hand­ling R&D pro­jects, inform­a­tion about fund­ing meas­ures and much more.
IBB Net­zwerk GmbH occu­pies an essen­tial pos­i­tion for us and thus a region­al and supra-region­al sig­ni­fic­ance for indus­tri­al bio­tech­no­logy in Bavaria.

Sil­antes has exper­i­enced IBB as an import­ant, com­pet­ent part­ner in the devel­op­ment of its tech­niques, not only in the suc­cess­ful hand­ling of the fund­ing land­scape (most recently in the sup­port provided as part of the Bay. Ini­ti­at­ive ​“Call for Bio­tech­no­logy”), but fur­ther­more in the net­work cooper­a­tion in the cre­ation of innov­at­ive Sil­antes products, such as iso­tope-labelled mouse feed, a spe­cial product for quant­it­at­ive pro­teo­m­ics and meta­bolo­m­ics in mice. For us, IBB’s con­nec­tions into aca­demia and polit­ics have proven help­ful in expand­ing our activities.

IBB is not only act­ive in the Munich met­ro­pol­it­an region, but has its sights set on the whole of Bav­aria. This has benefited Sil­antes, which is devel­op­ing out of the labor­at­ory sec­tor and look­ing for sites for pilot plants. IBB’s fin­ger-point­ing at north­ern Bav­aria (Straub­ing and Deg­gen­dorf) as pos­sible altern­at­ives to Munich for afford­able land to build pilot plants has been suc­cess­fully used by Silantes.

Pro­fess­or Zorbas, togeth­er with his team, has man­aged to bring IBB togeth­er with the sub­groups of SMEs, aca­demia and large com­pan­ies into a power­ful asso­ci­ation, mak­ing it an import­ant build­ing block in the Bav­ari­an innov­a­tion land­scape in the field of indus­tri­al biotechnology.

The nova-lnsti­tut is an inter­na­tion­al research and con­sult­ing insti­tute with about 50 sci­ent­ists and a focus on ​“renew­able car­bon”. In this con­text, this primar­ily rep­res­ents bio­mass and CO2, and indus­tri­al bio­tech­no­logy is of fun­da­ment­al import­ance for both. IBB there­fore has an import­ant role here in sup­port­ing this trans­form­a­tion in Bav­aria and through­out Ger­many through a vari­ety of pro­jects at a high level.

As a mem­ber of the Indus­tri­al Bio­tech­no­logy Cluster, we have the oppor­tun­ity to make per­son­al con­tact with an even wider range of part­ners via the net­work meet­ings, we receive assist­ance in set­ting up con­sor­tia and can find out about pub­lic fund­ing pro­grammes and news from the industry. We appre­ci­ate the pro­fes­sion­al event organ­isa­tion and sup­port for our con­cerns, which is why we are now involved in two net­works man­aged by IBB Net­zwerk GmbH. We will there­fore be happy to con­tin­ue our co-oper­a­tion with IBB Net­zwerk GmbH in the future.

IBB Net­zwerk GmbH has built up an extens­ive cluster in the field of indus­tri­al bio­tech­no­logy over the last few years, res­ult­ing in valu­able links between the aca­dem­ic and indus­tri­al worlds. Through strong expan­sions in recent years, the loc­al cluster has increas­ingly become a cluster with high-rank­ing part­ners from all over Ger­many and bey­ond. For the aca­dem­ic world, it is essen­tial to estab­lish con­tacts with industry for applic­a­tion-ori­ented research and know­ledge trans­fer, and IBB is always a reli­able and help­ful part­ner here. The net­work­ing events organ­ised for this pur­pose provide an excel­lent stage to present one’s own top­ics, to engage in inform­al con­ver­sa­tion and not infre­quently ideas for joint research pro­jects and oth­er forms of cooper­a­tion have emerged from this.

Through our IBB mem­ber­ship, we gain fast and tar­geted access to nation­al and inter­na­tion­al expert circles and net­works. By advising on the applic­a­tion and imple­ment­a­tion of suit­able fund­ing meas­ures, innov­at­ively linked R&D cooper­a­tion part­ner­ships with high sci­entif­ic and oper­a­tion­al pro­spects of suc­cess are formed in this way. Since VWP oper­ates inter­na­tion­ally, mainly because of the coun­tries of ori­gin of a wide vari­ety of oil plants, IBB Net­zwerk GmbH assumes a medi­at­ing and bridging func­tion between non-European interests/​markets and the com­pet­ence and strong pos­i­tion of indus­tri­al bio­tech­no­logy in Bavaria.

For us, IBB is the long-stand­ing part­ner and con­tact for this sec­tor. IBB net­works the play­ers, ini­ti­ates pro­jects and provides import­ant impulses. We have there­fore sup­por­ted IBB since the beginning.

Bio­tech­no­logy is a cent­ral build­ing block for us to devel­op solu­tions for our busi­ness areas of Health, Sus­tain­able Chem­istry and Envir­on­ment­al and Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion. Here we can count on the sup­port of IBB Net­zwerk GmbH, which pro­motes the exchange of net­work part­ners in very dif­fer­ent formats (net­work­ing events, con­fer­ences, dir­ect medi­ation of con­tacts) and thus offers us the oppor­tun­ity to gain cus­tom­ers and part­ners. Anoth­er import­ant aspect is the inform­a­tion about the frame­work and fund­ing con­di­tions of bio­tech­no­logy, which we appre­ci­ate very much. In our view, IBB Net­zwerk GmbH is of par­tic­u­lar import­ance for the bio­tech­no­logy com­munity in Ger­many, both region­ally and nation­ally. That is why we sup­port IBB Net­zwerk GmbH through our mem­ber­ship in the association.