White Spaces Innovation in Sweden - Innovation policy for ... - Vinnova

WHITE SPACES INNOVATION IN SWEDENhealth. Self-monitoring equipment for healthcare in the home (heart, weight, bloodpressure etc.) is licensed to GE Healthcare. Other transversalities from HMV outwardsinclude to the Smart Textiles cluster at Boräs, Västra Götaland for biosensors, Robotdalenfor the Giraf health robotics innovation and Norrköping‟s Food initiative to socialisethe isolated elderly and enable them to eat nutritionally balanced food for improvedwellbeing.Processum Biorefinery ‘Hub’This initiative addresses the Grand Challenges of Energy, Sustainable Production andHealthcare. The centrepiece of this complex was the obsolescent Modo sulphite millwhich now earns SEK 3 million per day producing specialist cellulose raw cotton substitute.The present global „Peak Cotton‟ situation means this material used to sell $800-$1,000 per ton but now fetches $1,000-$5,000 per ton with 85% exported to China.More value-added could be extracted if the basic pulp mill was transformed into a cottonmill but major investment in new spinning and weaving technology is necessarybefore allowing any automated weaving products to be produced competitively in Sweden.Yet as cotton is pure cellulose, which also grows in trees, in principle it would notbe impossible to at least consider on-site yarn spinning even if weaving is better conductedelsewhere in Sweden (Smart Textiles) or abroad. A pilot plant for assessingyarn-spinning capabilities is under consideration in this connection. Other outputs fromthe old sulphite mill include the former Domsjö pulp and paper mill. After 4 years onthe closure list, it was acquired by a private consortium in 2000. They set a new courseand turned the ailing pulp mill into a highly profitable biorefinery. Europe‟s first pulpmill-biorefineryis achieving a 40% return on investment, at a time when pulp and papermills in general are struggling to break even. After the crisis of 2008, when the globalpulp and paper industry plunged into a loss of $8 billion, the Top 10 in both Europe andCanada remain in the red, although there are signs of recovery in the USA. The biorefineryis the Domsjö Fabriker mill which is currently preparing to extend its biorefiningcapacity with the installation of the Chemrec gasifier, expected to start up in 2013. Itwill convert the spent brown liquor of the sulphite process into 40 million gallons a yearof automotive fuel, namely BioDME and BioMethanol. Processum also makes constructionmaterials like ligno-sulfonate, which is dried and used in concrete, making itstronger and with less water content, cellulose derivatives as thickeners for constructionplaster, while green liquor sludge is tested for dirt-road binding where it acts as an innovativedust inhibitor material. Close links exist with the Smart Textiles cluster andGöteborg BIO not only for fashion textile materials for H&M but medical fabrics forfirms like Mölnycke Medical Fabrics AB a world-leading producer of single-use surgicaland wound products where weaving of tissue and surgical cloth has been implementedat Gothenburg. A project on blood vessel replacement textiles is under way withSmart Textiles at Boräs, near Gothenburg. With GöteborgBIO, verification of bio „scaffolds‟bionics products is the subject of project discussions. Elsewhere SEKAB plans a69