From forest to feed: enable the wood industry to bridge the protein gap
For decades, Europe has been facing a huge protein deficit (more than 70% is imported). Today, the objective is to initiate ways to sustainably produce proteins in Europe, by creating new cross-sectorial businesses. Partners within the consortium have been developing a bio-refinery concept allowing transformation of woody biomass into high-value Single Cell Protein (SCP) to be used as animal feed.
The SYLFEED project consists in upscaling the bio-refinery process to ensure successful demonstration of Arbiom Wood to Food technology consisting in converting  lignocellulose into SCP for use in aquaculture. SYLFEED will demonstrate the synergies between forestry industry and protein fish feed market, creating new high value opportunities for the former and an alternative, sustainable, protein source for the latter. Wood residues are abundant and highly sustainable and SCP present an amino-acid profile close to that of the fishes, making them an excellent raw material in fish feed formulation (there is room for more than 50 lignocellulose bio-refineries in Europe, leading to the production of at least 1.4 Mt of proteins and a significant reduction of the protein gap).
SYLFEED spans across the full value chain: from biomass stakeholder to fish feed sellers (future buyers of SYLFEED proteins), including biomass-to-SCP technology developer/ experts. SYLFEED’s ambition is threefold:
- To respond to strategic needs of protein production in Europe to increase self-sufficiency.
- To improve the local economy (forest industry), save jobs in important industrial sectors and create new ones in the bio-economy.
- To produce proteins for fish feed in a way that addresses local and global environmental issues (oceans overexploitation and negative effects of plant’s culture – soybean, corn...). 
To do so, the grand challenge of the SYLFEED demonstration project is to upscale from pilot scale and validate the bio-refinery process that converts lignocellulose into SCP suitable to formulate fish feed.