Earlier in October, the “European Bioeconomy in Figures 2008 – 2019” report was published on the BIC website. Conducted by nova-Institute and commissioned by BIC, this yearly update report dives into Europe’s bio-based industries to reveal that the bio-based industries continue to grow despite significant changes due to Brexit.
According to the latest available data in Eurostat, the bio-based industries’ total contribution to the EU’s bioeconomy in 2019 was above 814 billion EUR. This represented an increase of over 4%- or 34 billion EUR – compared to 2018, despite removing the UK from the scope. Analysis of the 2019 Eurostat data shows that the turnover of the entire bioeconomy (including food and beverages and the primary sectors of agriculture and forestry) amounts to just over 2.4 trillion EUR in the EU-27.
Although the UK data is no longer included, the latest numbers show that the EU’s bioeconomy turnover remained stable. This has resulted in an increase of around 25% since 2008 (the earliest data point taken into account in this yearly-updated series of nova-Institute reports).
“The 2019 figures for the bio-based chemical industry (including plastics) alone, reveal a turnover of around 48 billion EUR (excluding UK) which depicts a decrease from 2018’s 54 billion EUR (including UK). The respective bio-based share has also been adjusted, resulting in a higher share, from 13.4% in 2018 to around 13.8% in 2019”.
In addition to the bio-based share for production value in the chemical sector, this year’s report includes for the very first time the chemical sector’s bio-based share for production volume. According to analysis, the bio-based share of the production volume of the organic part of the chemical sector amounts to 9% in 2019, increasing from 6.8% in 2008. This data demonstrates that the often communicated 10% share of organic carbon in the chemical sector is a reasonable estimation.
The report also states that the bio-based carbon share in the chemical sector is higher than usually reported by the petrochemical industry. The first report in this series was first published in 2016, demonstrating for the first time the macroeconomic effects generated by the bioeconomy, in terms of turnover and employment.
