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environments. Material so obtained is passed to R&D marine laboratories which, in the EU, are mostly in public funded universities or institutes. The costs of bioprospecting may be significant. There is also considerable public investment in the science with € 130 million having been allocated under FP 7 and through Horizon 2020`s Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies4 over EUR 83 million are allocated for the period of 2014-20155. Additional financing within Horizon 2020 can be expected through the Societal Challenges` section calls on bioeconomy. Europe has an array of marine research infrastructures and there are a number of initiatives and networks in place which aim to coordinate their efforts and facilitate access to them. The recently launched Marine Biotechnology ERA-NET is one such initiative which will promote and coordinate collaboration between national and regional research funding organisations as well as SMEs. However, stakeholders still report that access to Blue Biotechnology infrastructure is limited. SMEs are an important aspect of the Blue Biotechnology value chain as they play a key role bridging the gap between public sector R&D activities and commercialisation of products, mainly by large private, often multinational, companies. Their role is the identification, validation and derisking of industrial opportunities from marine bioresources. They are often single-focus marine bioactives companies and thus contribute to the ‘Blue’ sphere. SMEs tend to be placed at the initial product development stage of the value chain, essentially the high risk ‘cash-burn’ phase where the screened products, often lodged in ‘biobanks’ are transformed into bankable potential products for up-scaling and commercialisation. Due to the risks involved, financing – often but not always from venture capital – is unpredictable and fickle. As a consequence these SMEs are very vulnerable; for example there has been a 17% fall in venture capital investment since 2008. This interface between the SMEs and the commercial is emerging as one of the weakest links in the chain. The European Blue Biotechnology sector appears to be strongest in its R&D effort, as demonstrated by their contribution of 25% of all global publications on the topic. However the contribution to patents offering international protection6, as an indicator of economically commercial products, is only 13%, mainly taken out by large private sector companies. The uptake of commercial products of marine origin is spread across diverse and dynamic subsectors including health, cosmetics, food, energy, aquaculture and marine environmental services (including bioremediation). These sub-sectors are at different stages of development and have encountered different stages of growth to date. A huge array of potential products and services across all of the sub-sectors has been identified, which demonstrates the potential of the Blue Biotechnology sector. These are reviewed in the report. The greatest users of Blue Biotechnology products in commercialisation are the health, cosmetics and food sub-sectors with most products having a large expected societal as well as economic value. Underlying problems and barriers Within the context of the project three fundamental sources were used to identify the underlying problems and barriers, these are:  Literature review and desk-based research;  Stakeholder information provided via the international workshop; and 4 Altogether the section on Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies has a budget of €13.5 billion for the period of 2014-2020 5 European Commission (2013): Draft Horizon 2020 work programme 2014 – 2015, Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials, Biotechnology and Advanced Manufacturing and Processing, http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/pdf/workprogrammes/nanotechnologies_materials_draft_work_programme.pdf 6 A WO patent is granted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The prefix WO, which is short for WIPO, indicates that the patent will be administered by this body. In general, the protection conferred on an invention by patent law will only extend to the country or territory in which it is patented. This can be problematic for businesses that wish to expand or to sell their invention abroad. It would be expensive and complicated to have to apply simultaneously for a number of separate patents in many different countries. A WO patent offers a solution to this. Study in support of Impact Assessment work on Blue Biotechnology iii

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