EUIndTech2025 is the new EU flagship event, in which the two cyclical events, “Conference on Industrial Technologies” and “EuroNanoForum” are merged. This year it was done during the Polish presidency of the EU Council in Krakow, Poland. The EUIndTech2025 brought together more than 800 stakeholders from academia, research organizations, industry, NGOs and policymakers to discuss the state-of-the-art technologies, challenges and trends.
BNN’s CEO Andreas Falk in his role as part of NSC’s coordination team as well as a partner in SSbD4CheM, organised a NSC Session, having Prof. Martin Himly (PLUS) (chair of the NSC Working Group on Education) as moderator and Prof. Eva Valsami-Jones (UoB) (member of NSC’s Coordination Team) as speakers in key roles of the session. Together with other members of the NSC and further stakeholders they were on stage at EUIndTech25 for the NSC-session entitled “Designing Safe and Sustainable Materials and Chemicals – SSbD Implementation and Digitalization” on June 2nd, 2025.
The NSC session addressed the importance of integrated approaches, data-related expectations, advantages and challenges for ultimately balancing ecological, societal, and economic goals for a more sustainable future. The session was moderated by Martin Himly with oral presentations given by Eugenia Valsami-Jones (UoB), Andreas Künkel (BASF) and Garbine Guiu Etxeberria (EC, DG RTD). For the panel discussion the speakers were joined by Andreas Falk (BNN), Daniel Hubert (VisterNova), Peter Klein (FhG) and Mary B. Walsh (Honeywell).
As a follow-up of the discussions during the session, the panellists formulated 3 paragraphs as output of the session, which will be part of the Malopolska Declaration.
Output of the NSC session feeding into the Malopolska Declaration: Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD)-guided innovation of materials and chemicals represents an essential requirement for any future product entering the European market, enabling integration of functional performance, safety and sustainability. Efforts need to be taken to facilitate science-led harmonization of environmental, economic, and societal requirements at early innovation stages. Such well-balanced approaches require a multidisciplinary collaboration further supported by tailored funding, interconnected on regional, national and international level to gain synergies of public investment.
Interoperable digitally enabled workflows covering entire value chains serving various sectors are needed. Performance indicators are required to be included in SSbD digitalization to foster and speed-up the uptake of innovative advanced materials in industrial production. Efforts need to be taken to improve data quality and metadata completeness to increase the reliability of predictions and generate greater acceptance and trust.
Upon SSbD implementation, focus shall be on solution-oriented approaches that need to include communication between all stakeholders. Market-focused incentives for SSbD implementation need to be established within the EU to generate employment and economic growth as part of the green deal in Europe and later globally.
NSC members highlighted during the NSC session the work done within the NSC projects, SSbD4CheM among others, to a very engaged audience in Krakow.
