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About BlueChem

What is BlueChem?

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BlueChem is the first incubator for sustainable chemistry in Belgium as well as the ideal location for start-ups and scale-ups to grow and innovate.

This unique public-private partnership brings industry, academics and government together with the common ambition to help start-ups and growth companies grow on an industrial scale. Open innovation and the mutual exchange of expertise make BlueChem the place to be for promising innovation, development and cutting-edge research.

BlueChem opened its doors in May 2020 at the eco-effective Blue Gate Antwerp business park, in the heart of one of the largest chemical clusters in the world. BlueChem is boosting promising innovations to create the chemistry of the future.

Yet in the chemistry sector, turning promising innovations into new businesses is no easy task. It takes time, courage and money to move from a lab setting to an industrial production scale.

BlueChem provides the right facilities in the right place to enable ground-breaking ideas to grow from lab experiments into new chemical companies with a strong focus on sustainability and the circular economy.

The incubator offers a mix of fully equipped and freely customisable labs, private offices and flexible workspaces to accommodate start-ups, SMEs, large companies, research centres and knowledge institutions alike. Catalisti, the spearhead cluster for chemistry and plastics, is also taking an active role in BlueChem to detect, launch and supervise promising innovation projects.

 

BlueChem is a project costing approximately €11 million that is supported by the European and Flemish governments. The EU is investing over €3.4 million through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Flanders is contributing €868,397 via the Hermes Fund while the City of Antwerp is investing €4 million.