Environment

France is Europe’s largest food producer and the second largest food exporter in the world. Bio fuels represent therefore not just an environmentally-friendly alternative but also the greatest commercial development for French agro-foods business this century.

Two regions of northern France are particularly concerned, Picardy and Champagne-Ardenne. These two regions represent France’s “breadbasket”, accounting for 19% of France’s soft wheat area but also 59% of sugar beet and 12% of French rapeseed and sunflower seed. The regions are combining resources to foster France’s leading trade cluster in agro-foods. Their shared ambition is to make the region Europe’s leading producer of bio fuels and agro-chemicals. The trade cluster goes under the name “Industries et Agro-Ressources” (IAR). It has divided its ambitions into 4 categories: bio-energy, bio-materials, bio-molecules and food ingredients.

Recent investments in the regions have concentrated on these four categories. Sugar and cereal co-ops are spending some €500m on three new refinery projects in 2006:

- in Aude, the construction of a new bio diesel (diester) plant with Soufflet
- a bio ethanol plant in Aisne with Terreos
- two cereal-based refineries in the Marne with Cristal Union and Champage Céréales.

While bio fuels attract greater media attention at the moment, the two regions are also promoting agro-chemicals. Several projects in agro-chemicals are underway, helped by the trade cluster with assisted R&D funding. Joint ventures between local universities, cereal or sugar beet producers and agro-food businesses have been established; including non-French players like the US company Diversified Natural Products (DNP).

The trade cluster has already established links and relations with similar trade clusters in Belgium, Hungary, Finland and Canada. They are observing trends in the US and India and are in discussion with similar projects in Italy, Japan and Korea.

The IAR trade cluster is currently supporting 8 R&D projects with funding, worth a total of €21.4m. Each project brings together research personnel, typically associated with a university, with agro-food industrialists.