On 14 and 15 October 2025, the COUNTLESS project partners met at the Kastamonu Entegre site in Istanbul, Türkiye, for the M26 consortium meeting.
All work package leaders reported on the results achieved during the last year, showing that the project is well on track.
Key highlights from the meeting were:
- The scale-up of lignin depolymerisation at VITO is ongoing, with continuous fractionation successful.
- Application development is progressing well – the partners are testing the different lignins and are checking which perform best in which application.
- In WP4, partners have successfully identified key parameters for the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), paving the way for robust sustainability evaluations.
In a short break between presentations, project partners were asked to react to several statements, ranging from whether a green premium can be achieved for bio-based products, to the importance of IP to protect results. Most importantly, however, everyone agreed that the old saying “You can make anything out of lignin, except money” is no longer true. Lignin valorisation is an essential element in making any wood-based biorefinery profitable and sustainable.
The local Kastamonu team made everyone feel welcome and organised a tour of the R&D Center, where Kastamonu has been developing own resins for wood-based panels in the wet chemistry laboratory. These resins are then tested in prototypes of fiberboard and particleboard samples up to 50 x 50 cm in size. Another application is resin impregnation of decor papers, which are laminated onto raw wood based panels – ensuring a holistic approach before site production. The Kastamonu Entegre R&D center is equipped with advanced analysis devices to understand resin chemistry and wood structure, and mechanical and physical tests of prototype wood based panels can be carried out based on relevant EN standards. The project partners observed the utilisation of the lignin based adhesives and flame retardants developed in COUNTLESS in the R&D laboratory.
The next day, the team organised a factory visit to the Kastamonu Entegre Gebze factory, located in Kocaeli. This plant produces fiberboards and particleboards, in raw and laminated products with different colours and decors. The COUNTLESS project partners visited the resin plant and the particleboard site of the factory. This on site visit showed how the bio-based materials to be developed in the project could be utilised in wood based panels in the future.