The OXIPRO consortium gathered in Bergen, Norway, from 13th –15th May 2025, for its final meeting, hosted by the Project Coordinator NORCE. This event marked the culmination of four years of collaborative research in enzyme innovation, supported by stakeholder engagement and cross-sector collaboration. It provided an opportunity to take stock of what the project has achieved, assess its broader significance, and define how its results will carry forward beyond the four-year funding period.
Kick-starting Engagement: Introducing OXIPRO’s Accessible Computational Tools
Before the official programme got underway, a hands-on workshop on OXIPRO’s computational platform (WP1) was provided by partner BSC. The platform is designed with a strong emphasis on user-friendliness to ensure that the 13 participants of varied backgrounds could engage effectively with the tools and methods for enzyme discovery and engineering.
Computational workshop participants. Photo: Gro Bjerga
Getting Bergen Talking: A Co-Creation Street Survey
The following day, OXIPRO participants took to the streets of Bergen for a hands-on public engagement activity, led by SBSM. As part of the project’s Social Awareness Study (WP7), 12 brave volunteers formed four teams—each linked to one of the project’s innovation cases: nutraceuticals, cosmetics, detergents, and textiles.
Equipped with QR codes and survey tools, they spent an hour interviewing locals and tourists about their shopping habits, sustainability concerns, and perceptions of enzyme-enabled products. The questions, drawn from earlier surveys conducted in Berlin and Athens, helped build a comparative dataset and test assumptions about public attitudes.
The event was informal but structured: responses were uploaded live and later analysed during the stakeholder session in the official meeting programme. A friendly competition added to the energy, with a prize provided to the team completing the most interviews.
This open-air outreach served both scientific and social goals—expanding the project’s dataset while keeping public perspectives at the centre of OXIPRO’s work on future consumer products.
A Warm Welcome
After the morning’s fieldwork, everyone reconvened at NORCE headquarters, where project coordinator Dr. Gro Bjerga opened the formal meeting. She welcomed the consortium and introduced a focused agenda highlighting OXIPRO’s achievements and legacy—moving quickly from initial reflections to concrete examples of how the project’s enzyme innovations are making an impact across sectors.
Real-World Innovations, Tangible Impacts
One of the central sessions of the meeting focused on OXIPRO’s four innovation cases, each demonstrating how enzyme technologies developed through the project are being applied in real-world contexts—and gaining traction with industry.
• Nutraceuticals: Antonio Garcia-Moyano (NORCE) presented work on transforming fish processing side streams into marine health products using enzyme-based conversion methods.
• Cosmetics: Helena Balfagón (LEITAT) showed how enzymes can stabilise personal care formulations, reducing the need for synthetic additives while appealing to environmentally conscious consumers.
• Detergents: Helena Balfagón (LEITAT) shared data on enzyme-enhanced cleaning products validated through life cycle assessments, showing improved performance with reduced environmental impact.
• Textiles: Oscar Romero (UAB) introduced an enzyme-driven biobleaching process that enables wastewater use, and lower temperatures and neutral pH conditions.
Each case linked scientific development with practical implementation, thanks to close collaboration with industry partners including ROLCO, ZORLU, CALYXIA, NOVO, GECCO, and BIOCATS. These companies contributed to testing, feedback, and market-readiness assessments—helping ensure that OXIPRO’s results are more than research outputs: they’re steps toward sustainable product alternatives.
Inspirational Talks: Industry and Policy in Perspective
To enrich the programme with broader insights, two invited speakers offered external perspectives on enzyme innovation from industry and policy angles.
On the first day, Bjørn Liaset, Chief Scientific Officer at Biomega Group, delivered a keynote on how enzyme technologies are being used to upcycle fish by-products into nutraceuticals. Drawing on Biomega’s commercial work, he illustrated how enzyme processing can drive product innovation while supporting circular economy principles—offering a practical counterpoint to OXIPRO’s own nutraceuticals case.
The second day featured Anne Lyngbye from Novonesis, who addressed the evolving EU policy landscape for enzymes. She highlighted persistent regulatory hurdles, especially within REACH, and emphasised the need for frameworks that better support enzyme adoption across sectors. Her talk reinforced the relevance of OXIPRO’s policy work and underlined the importance of continued alignment with EU priorities like the Green Deal and Safe and Sustainable by Design.
Spotlight on Emerging Researchers
Midway through the first day, early-career researchers (ECRs) took centre stage with a series of fast-paced, three-minute talks. PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from across the consortium shared their individual contributions to the project, spanning modelling, enzyme engineering, application testing, and sustainability assessment.
The format encouraged clarity and focus, and the session provided valuable visibility for the next generation of scientists working at the interface of biotechnology and sustainable product development. The presentations sparked informal exchanges and thoughtful feedback during the following coffee break, reinforcing OXIPRO’s commitment to supporting young researchers as active contributors to collaborative science.
SMEs Driving Innovation Forward
Later in the day, representatives from small and medium-sized enterprises—CALYXIA and GECCO—shared how they’ve helped move OXIPRO results beyond the lab, and how OXIPRO has influences their business growth. Their presentations focused on the role of SMEs in scaling up enzyme-based innovations and bridging the gap between technical feasibility and market readiness.
CALYXIA highlighted how their materials expertise contributed to translating enzyme functionalities into viable product formats, while GECCO discussed their role in introducing novel enzyme solutions and supporting commercial piloting. Both companies illustrated how SMEs can play a pivotal role in testing, adapting, and ultimately commercialising research outputs.
Their contributions underscored a key message of the project: agile industry partners are essential to ensuring that research doesn’t end at publication but continues through to product development, user testing, and deployment.
Engagement Beyond the Lab: Policy, Public Dialogue, and Stakeholder Outreach
One of OXIPRO’s core aims has been to ensure that research doesn’t stay confined to the lab. At the final meeting, a dedicated session led by Lesley Tobin (REDINN) traced how the project has connected enzyme innovation with broader societal and policy contexts.
On the policy front, OXIPRO made strategic contributions to shaping the Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework, advocating for regulatory changes under REACH to better reflect the specific properties of enzymes, and coordinating joint policy briefs through the FNR-16 Cluster. The project also played a leading role in the FNR-16 Policy Working Group, ensuring that enzymes are recognised as essential tools in Europe’s green and digital transitions.
In parallel, OXIPRO maintained a strong commitment to public engagement. Over four years, it rolled out a diverse mix of activities—from street surveys in Berlin, Athens and Bergen, to interactive World Cafés, National Science Week events in Norway and Spain, and school outreach. Public-facing materials included factsheets, newsletters, lay-friendly explainers, and a podcast series—all designed to demystify enzyme science and make its applications tangible and relevant.
Through social media, workshops, and science festivals, the project created multiple entry points for different audiences—from citizens and students to regulators and industrial end-users. This work helped raise awareness, gather feedback, and build trust around the potential of enzyme-enabled products in everyday life.
Taken together, these efforts underscored OXIPRO’s commitment to transparency, relevance, and active dialogue—ensuring that innovation is developed with, not just for, society.
Looking to the Future: OXIPRO’s Lasting Legacy
The second day of the meeting shifted focus to what comes next.
As a starting point, Mona Arnold (VTT) presented an overview of the project’s sustainability outcomes, highlighting the broader environmental and societal value of enzyme-based innovations. She emphasised that OXIPRO has shifted thinking—not just about products, but about what enzymes can achieve in a circular, low-impact economy.
Next, the project coordinator Dr. Gro Bjerga summarized the project’s main achievements, and pointed to key impacts. She highlighted that OXIPRO’s long-term legacy is enabled through open-access content on scientific achievements and policy contributions that influence future academic and industry practices, policy, education. OXIPRO has also safeguarded novel technical solutions through pending patents, and supported future innovation capacities through training of early career researchers.
A panel discussion featuring Lilly Amore (BIOCATS), Oscar Romero (UAB), Lola Rodrigues (NORCE), and advisory board member Jennifer Littlechild (University of Exeter), explored how OXIPRO’s findings can continue to inform EU funding regimes, future research, support regulatory development, and contribute to new collaborative projects.
Speakers reflected on the potential for continued impact through follow-on initiatives, sister projects, and policy engagement. There was strong consensus that while the formal funding period is ending, the knowledge, tools, and partnerships developed through OXIPRO remain highly relevant.
To support this long-term impact, OXIPRO’s resources will remain openly accessible. The project website, Zenodo community, YouTube channel, and training materials—including factsheets, case studies, peer-reviewed articles, and podcasts—will continue to be available for researchers, educators, regulators, and industry stakeholders.
In closing, the coordination team reflected on the next steps: final reporting, knowledge dissemination, and ensuring that the project’s results stay visible and useful.
– OXIPRO’s work does not end here—it continues through the people, data, and ideas it has set in motion, says Gro Bjerga.
A Farewell to Bergen — and a New Beginning
With more than 60 participants attending in person and many others having contributed throughout the project’s four-year journey, the final consortium meeting in Bergen brought the OXIPRO community together one last time—though not to wrap things up, but to prepare them for what comes next.
Held in NORCE’s headquarters and rounded off with a relaxed dinner in Bergen’s historic city centre, the meeting created space for focused analysis, strategic discussion, and collective reflection. It captured the full scope of the project—technical advances, policy engagement, industry collaboration, and public outreach—and provided a platform to assess how these elements connect and where they can go from here.
Rather than a conventional close, the Bergen gathering functioned as a pivot point: an opportunity to review what’s been achieved, surface what still needs attention, and plan for continued use of the project’s outputs. Discussions centred not only on results but on legacy—how to keep OXIPRO’s tools, insights, and partnerships active beyond the formal end date.
Final reporting and deliverables will follow in the weeks ahead, but the impact of OXIPRO is already extending beyond its original scope. From shaping regulation to supporting greener product development and encouraging wider societal dialogue around enzymes, the project has carved out a place for enzyme technologies in Europe’s transition to sustainable innovation.
As the final conversations wrapped up in Bergen, the message was clear: OXIPRO may be concluding, but the work—and its relevance—continues.