North Atlantic reasearchers join forces

The HOLOSUSTAIN project has been funded by NORA in May 2019 for up to three years and total funding of up to 900 000 DKK and is focused on establishing a world-leading cluster-type platform for innovation in the sustainable exploitation of North Atlantic sea cucumber species. The platform will allow cooperation among participating countries (Norway, Iceland and Canada), partnering industry and R&D organizations, to develop their strategic position on the market and exploit complementarities in the partners’ resources after the project’s completion.

HOLOSUSTAIN is expected to produce the following main tangible results:

·        Establish a cluster-type platform, with its own webpage and established partners, functioning as a knowledge hub on sea cucumber value chains.

·        Incorporate a searchable data library as Intranet access, specifically focused on sea cucumber chemical, nutritional and metabolic potential, as a tool for the discovery of novel, potential health-related products, and applications.

·        Organize two sea-cucumber focused collaborative international workshops with the participation of external stakeholders from the corresponding legislative and resource management local/national authorities as well as relevant companies.

·        Report with guidelines for strategic innovation objectives that will be implemented in further value chain development and submission of funding proposals to international grant schemes. Training and technology transfer capacities of the project’s partners will also be included.

·        Establish agreements among the industrial partners for common market opportunities and resource sharing.

The project’s activities are distributed in 2 work packages:
WP1: Sea cucumber innovation platform creation and networking, and

WP2: Establishment of common opportunities for sustainable fishing and aquaculture conditions.

In November 2019 two main project deliverables were prepared - the project’s public website part, with News section, a Gallery and detailed information on the involved partners. The Intranet section with searchable data library tool on sea cucumber biology, fisheries, aquaculture and bioactive potential is going to be built from December 2019 on and throughout the project’s duration. The second deliverable – the first issue of the project’s newsletter has been published on the website of partner NCE Blue Legasea 

 

The next HOLOSUSTAIN objective - the first International workshop to be organized in the project’s framework - will take place in Iceland, Reykjavik before the summer 2020.