The twelve partners of the European bioeconomy project ZEST held their fourth consortium meeting online, with the aim of reviewing the project timeline, placing particular emphasis on key milestones, expected deliverables and the identification of potential adjustments to the planning.
The meeting was chaired by the Danish Technological Institute, the coordinating entity of the consortium. During the session, the status of each work package was reviewed individually and the next steps were discussed in detail.
Overall, and in line with the conclusions of the first review meeting with the funding programme, held in the summer of 2025, project implementation is considered satisfactory. The consortium highlights the good progress achieved in digital infrastructure, upstream experiments, downstream testing and consumer perception studies. However, potential bottlenecks have been identified, mainly linked to challenges in fermentation processes, such as foaming and biomass inconsistency, as well as the limited availability of sufficiently characterised material for downstream processing and product development.
Another key issue addressed during the meeting was the acquisition of the Latvian industrial partner Bioreactors.net — leader of Work Package 2, Bioreactor Design and Fermentation Upscaling — by the Tetra Pak Group.
First deliverables published
The fourth General Assembly also included the presentation of Deliverable 3.1, ZEST Data Management Platform and Digital Modelling Framework Specification, as well as Deliverable 6.1, Roadmap and Application of the SSbD Framework. Both documents are now available on the project’s official website.
The role of CTA
Within the ZEST project, which aims to reduce industrial waste through fungal fermentation processes and produce alternative proteins, CTA is responsible for designing and implementing the project’s communication and dissemination strategy until its completion, scheduled for May 2028.
