STAPLES: strengthening resilience of cereal value chains

The project focuses on Middle East and North Africa regions

 

Countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions are particularly exposed to shocks in international food markets, and especially cereals, due to their low internal food production capacity and their high reliance on imports.

To address this challenge and increase the resilience of MENA food systems, the STAPLES project, coordinated by Politecnico di Milano, Department of Management Economics and Industrial Engineering, has kicked off.

The project, funded under the PRIMA programme and supported by Horizon Europe, brings together a consortium of nine partners from Italy, Spain, Egypt, and Morocco including universities, think tanks and research organisations, cooperatives and a multi country business network gathering several Chambers of Commerce and Industry of the Mediterranean region.

Over a timespan of three years, STAPLES aims at co-creating and disseminating new knowledge about the external stressors and shocks that are linked with global cereal value chains, along with potential solutions that local supply chain actors and policymakers can adopt to mitigate and manage effectively those destabilizing factors. Leveraging digital tools, new insights and data from available platforms will be integrated into a dashboard and a decision support system that will guide stakeholders in adopting evidence-based recommendations and actionable solutions identified by the project.

The POLIMI team is led by Prof. Federico Caniato and is composed of researchers from the Departments of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering (DIG) and Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB).

Altogether, they will be responsible for assessing the resilience of MENA’s cereal value chain, elaborating procurement recommendations for public and private storage, and developing digital tools informing private and public actors.

The project also sees the involvement of Fondazione Politecnico Milano who will support in project management and communication and dissemination activities.

Transforming agrifood value chains: the Ploutos Sustainable Innovation Framework

 

After three years of dedicated work, the Ploutos project, funded under the Horizon 2020 programme, successfully concluded in September 2023.

 

This initiative was designed to reshape the agri-food value chain, with a primary focus on fostering the transition towards more sustainable systems.

At its core, the project aimed to develop a Sustainable Innovation Framework (SIF) that took a systemic approach to the agri-food sector, leveraging on three key innovation streams: sustainable collaborative business model innovation, data-driven technology innovation and behavioural innovation.

To put theory into practice, the project realised 11 innovation pilots, representing a diverse array of ecosystems across 13 different countries. Adopting a multi-actor approach, these SIPs engaged various stakeholders to implement, test, and assess new innovative solutions and methodologies, including the SIF. In this process, practical insights and valuable lessons were derived, contributing to the continuous transformation of agri-food systems.

The Ploutos SIF was developed by a team of researchers from the Food Sustainability Lab of the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano led by Prof. Raffaella Cagliano. The initial version of the framework was designed at the early stages of the project based on theories and frameworks from the academic and grey literature, which were evaluated together with a panel of experts (representatives of the agrifood sector, universities and research centres, and government organisations). This preliminary version was then enhanced through an iterative cycle encompassing application, evaluation, and refinement, conducted together with the pilots and the experts. In addition to this, a set a practical recommendations and hands-on tools was developed, making the application of the SIF easily replicable.

According to the Ploutos SIF, the innovation process in the agrifood sector starts with the forming phase and is driven by a combination of supply push (e.g., policies), market pull (e.g., changes in consumers’ preferences) and technology push (e.g., introduction of more sustainable agri-food technologies).

The actual process starts when multiple actors come together and agree on a common mission. During this phase, an initial understanding of the changes needed in terms of business models, technologies and behaviours is developed. Integration of the three innovation streams is of paramount importance since sustainability is a systems-level problem that cannot be addressed with siloed approaches.

The second stage of the innovation process, called baseline assessment, requires defining clear sustainability priorities, identifying relevant key performance indicators linked to such priorities and assessing the baseline sustainability performance.

Focusing on the core of the process, the innovation phase, the SIF suggests following an iterative sequence of “understand – define – ideate – prototype – evaluate” to be performed for each innovation stream. One should start from the business model and develop a preliminary version that provides clear answers to questions such as: “How are resources procured and transformed to deliver value?”, “How do products or services meet customer needs and respond to societal challenges?”, “Who are the critical partners and collaborators in value creation?”.

Once a promising business model has been ideated, resources can be allocated to the technological innovation. Key aspects of technological innovations for the agrifood sector include data sharing principles (i.e., ensuring that data are not used against the farmers), interoperability (i.e., connecting different smart farming devices, databases, and information systems), and integration of different technologies, such as traceability systems and carbon credit platforms, to tap into additional revenue streams.

The new business model and the technological innovation will then trigger behavioural interventions to ensure they are successfully adopted. Behavioural innovations can be very wide in scope, going from technology adoption to consumer empowerment and creation of resilient ecosystems.

Solutions developed in each stream are then improved and fine-tuned through iterative cycles until the innovation process is completed.

The last phase of the SIF is the final evaluation that allows to assess the contribution of the proposed innovations to the key sustainability priorities.

The Ploutos SIF was followed by all the 11 pilots and allowed to achieve or even exceed most of the targets set by the pilots, proving to be an effective and easy-to-apply framework for a wide spectrum of agrifood innovations.

Ploutos: re-balancing the value chain in the agri-food system

Through data-driven technologies, collaborative business models and behavioural changes the project aims to make agri-food value chains more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable.

 

Agrifood systems are currently facing many interlinked challenges including the increasing world population, changes in climate conditions, the deterioration of natural resources and power imbalances along the value chain. The complexity of such challenges and the strong interconnection among stages of the supply chain imply the need to adopt innovative and systemic approaches, which can unlock the potential of the agrifood system to provide economic, environmental and social benefits. Innovative approaches must combine different forms of innovation: technological, organisational, social and institutional. Instead, systemic approaches require different actors across the agrifood value chain to cooperate with each other in the (re)design of more sustainable food systems.

Identifying, implementing and testing such innovative integrated approaches is the aim of Ploutos, a research and innovation project funded under the Horizon 2020 programme. The project, coordinated by the Greek organisation GAIA Epicherein, started in October 2020 and is now in its third and last year of execution.

The School of Management of Politecnico di Milano is one of the core partners of the project thanks to the deep knowledge about agrifood systems developed within the Food Sustainability and Smart Agrifood Observatories. The research team, led by Prof. Raffaella Cagliano, is primarily involved in the development of a framework for sustainability-oriented innovation that combines behavioural innovation, collaborative business model innovation and data driven technologies. This framework is currently being applied in 11 pilots covering a large variety of agri-food ecosystems across 13 countries. The design and implementation of innovative approaches follow a multi-actor approach and is supported by the “Ploutos Innovation Academy”, a virtual Academy where stakeholders are engaged in the co-design of innovative solutions and have access to a series of good practices regarding the sustainability of agri-food value chains.

The last year of the project officially started in October 2022, when the Ploutos Consortium met in presence at the premises of the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering. More than 50 representatives from 33 organisations gathered in Milan on October 4-5 to share the results achieved so far and to plan the activities for the last year ahead.

During the meeting, the 11 Sustainable Innovation Pilots (SIPs) had the opportunity to showcase the results of their work. The innovations they are developing revolve around some key aspects that are shaping agrifood value chains: smart farming solutions, traceability and data sharing, reduction of food waste, consumer empowerment, climate change adaptation through carbon farming and parametric insurance, and synergies between agriculture and tourism.

Smart farming and traceability solutions play a central role for many SIPs. For example, SIP1 has launched a traceability app that is currently used by actors operating in a frozen fruit value chain in Greece to retrieve all the information about the product, from crop inputs to process packaging operations. With respect to food waste, SIP9 has developed a platform that connects businesses with frontline charities and community groups to streamline surplus food donations. A total of 150 stakeholders from Serbia and North Macedonia has been onboarded and the solution allowed to redistribute more than 80,000 kg of surplus food through more than 50 realized donations. To reward farmers who adopt carbon sequestration practices, SIP8 and SIP10 are working on the development of a system to calculate and trace carbon credits, tradable certificates quantifying the amount of carbon sequestrated and stored in the soil. “Without agriculture, there is no tourism” is the motto of SIP11, which is seeking to strengthen the collaboration between the agriculture and the tourism sectors in the Balearic Islands by promoting experiences designed around local varieties and products. An example is the organisation of guided tours to admire the almond trees in bloom, an important tourist attraction.

Regardless of the specific focus of each pilot, some important conclusions can be drawn from the experiences collected in Ploutos so far.

First, combining different forms of innovations prove to be key in the adoption and scale-up of sustainability-oriented innovations. Even a very useful and well-designed digital solution may be ignored if rational/non-rational reasons influencing technology adoption are overlooked, or if the business model is poorly designed. The strong interdependence among the three pillars of innovations (technology, business models and behaviours) leads to important research questions currently under investigation: what element triggers the innovation journey of the pilots and how is the process unfolding? Providing answers to these questions will be among the research priorities of the POLIMI team over the last year of the project.

Finally, a long-term win-win relationship must be established among actors of the value chain as more competitive and resilient food system can be achieved only if the stakeholders collaborate effectively towards common sustainability objectives.

 

SER Social Energy Renovations

The H2020 project to finance sustainable construction in the service sector has begun

 

Financing sustainable building renovations in the service sector with an innovative tool that will accelerate the ecological transition and counteract energy poverty: This is the objective of the European project SER-Social Energy Renovations, which sees the participation of the Italian CGM Finance, the School of Management of the Politecnico di MilanoENEA, and Fratello Sole, a consortium of non-profit entities dedicated to fighting energy poverty. Other partners include the Spanish company GNE Finance, the project leader, Secours Catholique-Caritas France, and the Bulgarian branch of Econoler.

Financed under the Horizon 2020 programme, the project will last three years, in which a de-risking mechanism will be designed and developed to reduce the risk associated with financing and allow access to credit, even for subjects with limited economic capacity. The mechanism will include analysis and technical standardization when defining interventions to make buildings more energy efficient.

The projects will be consolidated and subject to social impact assessment and then financed, allowing investors to access safe, effective investments in line with ESG criteria. It will also allow social companies to carry out green renovations at accessible prices with the necessary technical assistance.

ENEA and Fratello Sole will involve service entities and select buildings used for non-profit activities, intervening with energy-efficient and sustainable restorations. Energy renovation will be carried out by Fratello Sole Energie Solidali – ESCo, a joint venture between Fratello Sole Scarl and Iren Energia.

Within the project, the School of Management will identify indicators to assess and analyse the social impact of the financed projects.

“The question of evaluating social impact is as current as it is complex, growing from a topic of interest to few people into an integral part of business strategy and an essential issue in finance”, explains Mario Calderini, Professor of Social Innovation in the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering.
He adds: “This project aims to improve not only the environmental impact generated by building efficiency interventions, but also the social impact generated by service-sector organizations, which will be able to offer better services due to the benefits of such interventions.” 

Finally, Secours Catholique-Caritas France, together with the Bulgarian branch of the energy efficiency consultation company Econoler, will explore the possibility of replicating of this tool in other European countries.

 

Announcing the start of the TREASURE project

New testing opportunities for new technologies to make the automotive sector more circular

 

1 June 2021 marked the start of the TREASURE project (leading the TRansion of the European Automotive SUpply chain towards a circulaR futurE), coordinated by Sergio Terzi and Paolo Rosa from the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering of the School of Management.
Co-funded by the European Commission with the H2020 programme, TREASURE is a Research and Innovation Action (RIA) that aims to offer new testing opportunities for new technologies to make the automotive sector more circular.

Its main objectives are:

  1. to guarantee sustainable use of raw materials in the automotive sector reducing the risks linked to supplies;
  2. to apply the circular economy paradigm to the automotive sector, acting as examples for the manufacturing macrosector;
  3. to deliver better economic, environmental and social performance for vehicles for all users;
  4. to create new supply chains around end-of-life vehicles (ELVs), focusing on the circular use of raw materials.

In this way, TREASURE will deliver tangible support for companies in the automotive sector, providing a practical demonstration of the benefits obtainable from the application of the circular economy paradigm, from the point of view of both business and supply chains and also of technology and sustainability, through the adoption of industry 4.0 technologies in the management processes of ELVs and their parts.

The primary results expected include:

  1. the development of an AI-based tool for analysis and comparison of possible circular supply chains in the automotive sector;
  2. the realisation of a series of successful cases for key players in the management of ELVs, such as car wreckers, scrap metal shredding plants, raw material recycling plants and vehicle manufacturers;
  3. the integration of key enabling technologies for the design, dismantling and efficient sustainable recycling of electronic auto parts.

Partners in the project, coordinated by the Politecnico di Milano, are the Dutch research centre TNO, Zaragoza University in Spain, the professional school at the Università della Svizzera Italiana, the Università degli Studi dell’Aquila, the Dutch consultancy agency Material Recycling and Sustainability B.V., the Estonian company for social studies Edgeryders OU, the Lithuanian LCD screen manufacturer EUROLCDS SIA, the Spanish auto parts manufacturer Walter Pack SL, the vehicle demolition company Pollini Lorenzo e Figli Srl, the leading Spanish car manufacturer SEAT SA, the software developers TXT E-Solutions Spa, the Spanish scrap metal recycling company Industrias Lopez Soriano SA, the Italian National Unification Body, and the French automotive cluster NEXTMOVE.

New life for electronic waste thanks to the circular economy

This virtuous example of circular economy is the result of the Horizon2020 FENIX project in which the Politecnico di Milano is a partner.

 

Like a phoenix rising out of its own ashes, the FENIX project has achieved its aim of giving new life to electronic waste, turning it into raw materials for eco-compatible products such as new metal filament for 3D printing, eco-friendly metal powders for additive manufacturing and sustainable 3D-printed jewellery.

The Horizon 2020 FENIX Project, in which the Politecnico di Milano is a partner, has drawn to a close after 40 months of work and achievement of its objective to develop new business models and industrial strategies with a view to a circular economy.

The Industry 4.0 Laboratory of the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano has in fact implemented an automated station for the disassembly of mobile phone circuit boards by collaborative-robots (cobots), one of the most advanced automation solutions in robotics technology, as they guarantee operational flexibility while permitting interaction with their surroundings and with the operators who share their tasks.

Thanks to a semiautomatic process, the cobot manages to unsolder the electronic components of the circuit board while preserving their chemical characteristics: it uses a jet of hot air to melt the solder holding together the components so that these can then be detached and processed separately from the board.

Thanks to the circular supply chain set up by the consortium participating in the project, the circuit boards disassembled by the Politecnico di Milano are processed by the University of Aquila, which recovers pure materials (such as copper, tin, gold, silver and platinum) from the boards and their electronic components. Copper and tin are then transformed into metal powders (by MBN Nanomaterialia SpA in Treviso) and filaments suitable for 3D printing (jointly by MBN Nanomaterialia SpA and I3DU and 3DHUB in Athens, Greece), both then tested at the Fundació CIM in Barcelona, Spain. Whereas the precious metals are used by I3DU and 3DHUB in Athens, Greece to create eco-compatible jewellery. Produced and sold through the consortium, these jewels can also be personalised with a 3D scanner service and given the shape of objects or people’s faces.

The hope is that when the project ends, the business models conceived and tested by FENIX will be replicable by other external parties, with a view to promoting the setting up of new circular supply chains.

Also worthy of note is that two of the results developed by the Politecnico di Milano team involved in the FENIX project have been cited by the EU Innovation radar and that an article written by the team received recognition from the publishers Taylor & Francis and appears on the website of the International Journal of Production Research as top cited article. Click here to read the article.

Source: https://www.polimi.it/pressroom/comunicatistampa/

For more info about the project: http://www.fenix-project.eu/
Link to the Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEg3DZSWyo62lSaMg7xxZrg

The challenge of circularity in extended supply chains

Awareness around the environmental impact of products and processes and moving towards the sustainable use of natural resources is increasing in Europe. As such, the circular economy paradigm is obtaining even more success.

Based on this, the H2020 FENIX project, of which the Politecnico di Milano is a partner, aims to develop a new set of business models and industrial strategies with a view to facilitating circular products and services.

Three pilot plants will be established thanks to the development of sustainable processes for the combined treatment of different types of e-waste (e.g. printed circuit boards):

1) A modular, multi-material, reconfigurable pilot plant producing metallic powders for additive manufacturing processes
2) A modular, multi-material, reconfigurable pilot plant producing 3D printed gems
3) A modular, multi-material, reconfigurable pilot plant producing advanced filaments for 3D printing processes

The three pilot plants will be designed in such a way as to exploit Industry 4.0 solutions (e.g. smart sensors) which are able to send online data in real time through dedicated websites developed by FENIX.

The result of this is that production capacity will be shareable amongst the different actors involved in very different supply chains, by encouraging the involvement of end users (both private users and companies) in industrial processes and offering new services to companies for monitoring and controlling industrial plants.

The scientific role of the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering takes many forms. Firstly, the identification of new circular business models able to make use of pilot plants developed in FENIX. Secondly, the assessment of how Industry 4.0 technologies could support circular processes, specifically those related to the disassembly of Printed Circuit Boards (PCB). Finally, the Department is responsible for the dissemination and communication of the FENIX project and the management of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) strategies.

One of the initiatives promoted by the Department related with FENIX involves collecting obsolete mobiles/smartphones. The mobile phones will be disassembled by the Industry 4.0 Lab in order to facilitate the recovery of valuable materials from electronic components through eco-friendly chemical processes. These materials, once transformed into metal powders, will be reused in additive manufacturing processes.

FENIX is also promoting a set of success stories related to the adoption of circular practices in different industrial sectors. The goal is to use real-world examples to demonstrate that the adoption of circular economy principles will allow for the creation of more sustainable supply chains by improving quality, market value and the alternative exploitation of secondary materials.

Finally, FENIX aims to integrate Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) for the efficient recovery of secondary resources within the same industrial plant. FENIX will consider three types of KETs:
1) Advanced production systems: a wide number of sensors will be embedded in each module that makes up the FENIX pilot plant.
2) Industrial bio-technologies: since the initial stages, FENIX has taken into account the use of biometallurgy for the sustainable recovery of materials from different types of waste.
3) Nanotechnologies: this type of materials technology allows for an improvement ofmaterials’ mechanical properties, thermal and electrical conductivity and overall functional properties.

FENIX (Future business models for the Efficient recovery of Natural and Industrial secondary resources in eXtended supply chain contexts)