Five years later, all these factors and the fact that innovation processes in the bioeconomy are cross-disciplinary, and include a network of diverse stakeholders, are still relevant to managers of bioeconomy organizations, irrespective of the specific production.
The most important and unique trait of bioeconomy productions, however, is the virtually unlimited market for many said productions once an economically viable production process has been identified. This is due to the unique versatility of many biomolecules, independent of their size (e.g. small biomolecules or large biopolymers), which creates room for diverse potentially large-scale applications.
Two examples out of many possible ones nicely illustrate the concept. Tannin is the name given to a mixture of high molecular weight biophenols extracted from certain woods and bark and increasingly used for widely different applications, including as an environmentally friendly agrochemical.28 Due to an expensive and energy-demanding production process, the current annual production of commercial tannins amounts to about 230,000 tonnes. Tannin, however, has a high-value chemical application as a building block in the preparation of adhesives and resins.29 The limiting factor for its utilization on the million tonne per year scale, has been and continues to be its limited supply and high cost. In the words of the father of the technology, “the potential is enormous, but it is not realized”.30
Another example is pectin. Currently manufactured at 70,000 t/a rate, this biopolymer is the most valued food hydrocolloid.31 Though increasing since more than a decade at 4-6% annual growth rate, its production from citrus peel (and apple pomace) is intrinsically limited by the high capital and operational expenses of conventional production plant and process, respectively.31 From biobased aerogels of exceptional thermal insulating power through superior food and beverage texturizer and emulsifier, pectin has a number of potential applications that so far were constrained by its limited supply.24 Once a low cost, high-throughput production process will be discovered and industrialized, for example based on emerging hydrodynamic32 or acoustic33cavitation extraction of citrus waste peel, its potential will be realized and the usage rate will increase to several hundreds of thousand tonnes per year.
Aware of the potentially enormous demand for the above-mentioned and many other bioproducts, bioeconomy companies owner of new process technologies should partner with other companies and license their proprietary technology so as to increase supply and lower the cost of these biobased ingredients, while increasing customer confidence in the biobased alternatives.
This will lead to major uptake of these products in place of competing, less performing – but until now much cheaper – oil-based or biobased alternatives, such as starch or gelatine in the case of pectin. In selecting the partner companies, however, bioeconomy company managers working in a highly competitive context should avoid to be naïve (as well as to be too cynical, opposite side of the same problem).34 Whether sourcing raw materials from oil-based feedstocks or from biological resources, existing chemical companies are (and will be) the main competitors of new bioeconomy companies. In other words, the biorefinery is not the evolution of the oil refinery, but rather its competitor.

2.6 Understanding the competitive landscape

As mentioned above, bioeconomy managers need a better understanding of the competitive landscape in which their companies operate, namely the global chemicals market.
One of the world’s largest biorefineries, located in France’s Bazancourt (Figure 3), converts more than 4 million tons of biomass per year (3 million tons of sugarbeet + 1 million tons of wheat + 400,000 tons of other biomasses such as alfalfa and woody materials) into sugar, glucose, starch, food or pharmaceutical alcohol, ethanol fuel, cosmetic actives, etc., with annual revenues exceeding \euro800 million.35 The site currently hosts eight companies (ADM, Air Liquide, A.R.D., Cristal Union, Cristanol, Givaudan, Procethol 2G, Futurol project, Vivescia), none of which is a petrochemical company. Out of 1,200 workers, 1,000 are permanent staff and 200 on-site scientists.