The 5th workshop of the BIOPEN project: ‘Open-innovation Platform strengthening cooperation and joint development of bio-based industries and downstream sectors’ entitled ‘Societal and Market Challenges for the Sustainable Development of Bio-Based Industries’ was successfully held on 25th October in Royal Olympic Hotel, Athens. Apart from delegates from the project’s consortium partners, key speakers representing a wide range of entities, from public sector regional associations to Greek, European and global networks as well as from networking EU co-funded projects to clusters. These speakers along with attendants from both the public and the private sector were focused on the most important social and environmental challenges that bio-based and other industries are called to address emphasizing in synergies of policies and business outlooks for capacity building and the support of customer driven networks.

The event started off with welcome addresses by V. Liogas representing the Ministry of Environment and Energy, followed by Prof. A. Kokosis on behalf of NTUA – IPSEN, who hosted the event.