The call is relevant for cities and regions that are looking to valorise untapped forest biomass. This call requires projects to enhance the contribution of the forest-based sector to climate change mitigation and adaptation, forest restoration and resilience, biodiversity, and rural development objectives. To achieve this, the project should apply a multi-actor approach by ensuring adequate involvement of all key actors in the relevant value chains and across the sustainable circular biobased system, including feedstock providers, industrial players, consumers, advisors, and policy makers. Projects shouls also explore synergies with existing initiatives and networks, such as the Common Agricultural Policy and the European and national CAP, the EIP-AGRI and the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems.

All stakeholders of the bio-based industries ecosystem including public authorities can apply for CBE JU funding. CBE JU calls for project proposals are open to any legal entity, be it private or public, for-profit or not-for-profit organisation, including:

• Large companies
• Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs)
• Research and technology organisations (RTOs)
• Universities
• Associations

Proposals should develop innovative planning tools and technologies for harvesting, storage, pre-treatment of residual and/or low value, unused or underutilized forest biomass or lower volume or/and less homogeneous biomass. Adopt decentralised approaches, including small-scale, mobile, containerised units, that consider the unique challenges across different European regions and among large, medium-sized, and small companies. Proposals should evelop and test the feasibility of conversion routes to bio-based chemicals and compounds, materials, products, assessing the viability of new business models around these concepts, test the local value chain by optimising logistics, improving cost efficiency, and collaborating with central hubs for further processing and refining and address the feasibility for different ownership types and cooperative structures to ensure alignment with value-chain cooperation.

The total indicative budget for the topic is EUR 7 million. It is estimated that a contribution of EUR 3.5 million would allow these outcomes to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of a proposal requesting different amounts

Cities and regions can apply for funding through the following steps. Cities and regions have to select the relevant call and draft a proposal with the required details. With the CBE JU networking platform, cities and regions can find partners to build a consortium. The proposal can be submitted using the Funding and tender opportunities portal using an EU login. All the members of the consortium must have a 9-digit Participant Identification Code (PIC) to apply for funding. Draft your project proposal in the submission service section of your topic page. This link becomes available when the call opens. Fill in all the required information and submit the proposal before the call deadline.

Call launch: 3 April 2025

Call deadline: 18 September 2025 17:00 CET