by Helena Tavares Kennedy (Biofuels Digest) Some of you may be celebrating the holidays with a bit of whisky – or ‘whiskey’ in some countries – but who knew this distilled alcoholic beverage could be so handy for the bioeconomy! The Whisky Project led by the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre, includes Horizon Proteins, MiAlgae, and BioPower Technologies working to maximize value from whisky coproducts like draff and pot ale.
In today’s Digest, while you sip on some good stuff, check out other Top 8 Innovations of the week, like how insects could be key to solving the material sourcing challenges associated with Mars colonization, or how one company’s meat milestone achieved commercial scale of lab-grown chicken, and more. READ MORE
Some of you may be celebrating the holidays with a bit of whisky – or ‘whiskey’ in some countries - but who knew this distilled alcoholic beverage could be so handy for the bioeconomy! The Whisky Project led by the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre, includes Horizon Proteins, MiAlgae, and BioPower Technologies working to maximize value…
The Whisky Project, led by the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre, includes Horizon Proteins, MiAlgae, and BioPower Technologies working to maximize value from whisky coproducts like draff and pot ale. All three companies already leverage whisky byproducts: Horizon Proteins extracts proteins from whisky production for animal feed, MiAlgae uses byproducts to make omega-3s for fish feed, and BioPower Technologies makes flour from draff. Under the Whisky Project, BioPower is evaluating whether liquids created by its produces could be beneficial to Horizon Proteins and MiAlgae, as well as look for further uses of pot ale.
IBioIC’s FlexBio laboratory at Heriot Watt University is also involved in the project, which has received £315,000 (USD$428 million) in funding. Zero Waste Scotland ponied up £130,000, with contributions from Scotch Whisky Research Institute and others. The project is a “tremendous value of how we can add significant benefit with a circular approach to
Julie Moulsdale is MD of Perceptive Communicators. Picture: contributed.
Earlier this year, we launched a webinar series with clients Homes for Scotland and Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC) on communicating effectively during Covid. As we anticipate another lockdown from Boxing Day, the communication insights shared at these events seem more relevant now than ever.
So what are the communications practices that will help your organisation survive and thrive? Our webinar panellists were clear that the starting point to any communications is usually your team. The working environment is likely to have an important influence here.
Several studies show that we are unlikely to return to the previous norm of being in the office five days a week. Like it or not, lockdown has proved to many for the first time that it is possible to work remotely and, at times, more productively.
Scotland’s whisky industry and biotechnology innovators are continuing to up their game to try and find new sustainable solutions from whisky co-products such as animal feed, while a new barley based vodka from Finland sees benefits for pig farmers as well as the circular economy.
Firstly, a year-long research initiative, The Whisky Project, is being led by the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC), and is funded to the tune of £315k (US$428k) in total, with £130k of a contribution from Zero Waste Scotland.
The project, which is also receiving additional support from the Scotch Whisky Research Institute (SWRI), sees three IBioIC members, Horizon Proteins, MiAlgae and BioPower Technologies, working in unison to further explore ways to extract maximum value from whisky co-products such as draff, the husk residue left from fermentation, and pot ale, the liquid remaining after the first distillation.