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This new IAL brings together the Materials, Engineering and Manufacturing and Chemistry and Physics research groups of the New Zealand Forestry Research Institute SCION, the Agropolymer Engineering and Emerging Technologies joint research unit in Montpellier, the Biopolymers, Interactions and Assemblies research unit in Nantes and the Fractionation of AgroResources and Environment joint research unit in Reims.

The IAL BIOMATA will provide fundamental and applied knowledge using resources from plant biomass for the development of biosourced materials for the design of the materials of the future.

The research carried out is part of a circular economy approach, which minimises the ecological footprint of manufacturing processes and integrates the end-of-life of products, right from their design phase.

The research projects within the LIA are based on 3 topics:
- the characterisation of plant materials from wood, wood by-products and various plant materials with a view to the manufacture of advanced bio-based materials;
- the development of sustainable processes for the manufacture of these materials;
- the design of materials and functional objects using 3D and 4D printing and the study of their properties.

The research will be conducted through synergistic studies carried out in the facilities of the different laboratories. It will include joint methodological developments for the characterisation and processing of advanced biobased materials, co-supervision of trainees, PhD students and post-doctoral fellows, reciprocal exchanges of researchers in the different partner laboratories, the organisation of seminars with a focus on video-conferencing in an environmentally responsible manner to take into account the distance between France and New Zealand, and scientific mediation activities on the topics covered.

Read: Communiqué de presse INRAE (in French)

Contact for FARE lab: Dr Gabriel Paës, gabriel.paes@inrae.fr

Signing of the LIA BIOMATA. (From left to right, top to bottom) Dr Ayesha Verrall, New Zealand Minister for Scientific Research and Innovation, Marie-Joo Le Guen and Claire Mayer-L'Aigle, LIA BIOMATA project leaders, Julian Elder, President and CEO of SCION, Laurence Beau, French Ambassador to New Zealand, Helen Anderson, Chair of SCION's Board of Directors, and Philippe Mauguin, President and CEO of INRAE.