Lignin in focus – looking back at the April 3rd ecosystem event and the SmartRecovery research project
ProjectsLignin is an abundant, but ultimately complex aromatic biomaterial of considerable interest for the research world and the biomaterial industry. Roughly 20-30% of wood consists of lignin and traditionally in chemical pulp production lignin is separated from the fibers into the black liquor of the chemical cycle and burned for bioenergy. Lignin has immense potential to increase the value of wood if lignin would be utilized not only for bioenergy but also for value-added innovative material and chemical applications to replace fossil-based materials. 4R open innovation ecosystem led by CLIC Innovation, ExpandFibre Transition Phase and the recently ended SmartRecovery Business Finland Co-Research project jointly organised a lignin-themed ecosystem event on April 3rd, 2025, to present the latest lignin research topics, workshop together on future opportunities for lignin as well as explore the business potential of lignin in more detail with dedicated company presentations.
Event spotlight for “Lignin in focus – Key results, industry cases, and future opportunities”
The April 3rd event attracted well over 70 onsite participants from different universities, research institutions and companies across Finland and the Nordics. The event was opened and expertly hosted throughout by Jussi Lahtinen, Ecosystem Lead at CLIC Innovation, and Miriam Kellock, Research Scientist at VTT. Additional opening words to the event were also delivered by Katariina Kemppainen, SVP, Group R&D at Metsä Group, representing the ExpandFibre Ecosystem.
Research topics discussed in the first session of the event touched upon multiple different aspects of the current research landscape for lignin and its potential future applications. Prof. Chunlin Xu from Åbo Akademi provided a thorough keynote presentation looking at the structure-property relationship in lignin for novel applications. The following three presentations were all closely linked to the two-year SmartRecovery Business Finland Co-Research project. Project manager of the SmartRecovery project Miriam Kellock provided an overview on the membrane technology for kraft lignin recovery researched during the project and presented key results on a spectroscopy-based method developed for lignin quality control. Glen Pauls, Research Scientist at VTT, presented primary findings related to the LigniSmart kraft lignin in energy storage applications. Paavo Penttilä, Academy Research Fellow and SmartRecovery project leader at Aalto University presented main findings on lignin particle formation and characterisation with scattering methods. The first session was closed by Taina Rauhala, Research Scientist at VTT, discussing the recent discoveries from the Business Finland funded BioCarbonValue project: the use of agribased carbons for supercapacitor and sodium-ion battery applications.
The second session of the event was dedicated to jointly exploring future opportunities and research needs related to lignin. Through a structured workshop, participants identified both key barriers and emerging opportunities for lignin valorisation. Challenges included the material’s inherent heterogeneity, lack of scalable analytics, and the current cost and complexity of pretreatment and upgrading technologies. However, promising future directions were also highlighted — from new applications in energy storage, biobased resins, and cosmetics to modular process innovations and cascade utilization concepts. A recurring theme in the workshop was the identified need for more collaborative ecosystems and demonstration pilots to bridge the gap from lab to market. Participants stressed the importance of aligning lignin properties with application-specific needs and called for better analytics, targeted funding opportunities, and enabling regulation to boost the industrial uptake and market development of lignin.
The third and final session of the event highlighted companies working closely with lignin. The session was opened by Juho-Matti Karpale, CEO at LignEasy Oy, presenting the principal innovation of the growing start-up company offering a groundbreaking lignin separation technology for kraft pulp mills. Elina Lohiniva, Business Development Director, Lignin, at ANDRITZ Oy, presented the pioneering global company’s large scale technology solutions for lignin recovery. Hanne Wikberg, Product and Business Development Director at Chempolis Oy, presented a glimpse into the resource-efficient biomass conversion to high-value products with Chempolis’ Formico® technologies. The session was closed by Carl-Magnus Brandén, R&D and Product Development Lead at Lixea, discussing the rapid development path of Lixea and the company’s lignin fractionation technology by sequential precipitation.
SmartRecovery project – reflecting on the research highlights together with project partners
To continue on the themes of the April 3rd “Lignin in focus” ecosystem event, the ExpandFibre team was extremely happy to invite SmartRecovery project manager Miriam Kellock, Research scientist at VTT, Academy of Finland Research Fellow and SmartRecovery project leader from Aalto University Paavo Penttilä in addition to two key industry members of the SmartRecovery consortium Elina Lohiniva, Business Development Director, Lignin at ANDRITZ and Juho-Matti Karpale, CEO at LignEasy, to reflect back together on the finished two-year Business Finland Co-Research project, as well as to dive a little deeper into the topics of lignin research and commercialisation.
The industrial partners of the SmartRecovery consortium represented the entire lignin valorization value chain, which complemented very well the fundamental research element of the project. Metsä Fibre and Fortum both supplied lignin-rich side streams of different origin (wood and straw, respectively), ANDRITZ and LignEasy provided enabling technologies for lignin separation and recovery, and finally ProSolve, Natural element Oy and Prefere Resins were the end-users of lignin for novel application areas.
All interviewees agreed that the April 3rd event was highly successful in bringing like-minded lignin enthusiasts together from the research world and the industry for the simple purpose of getting to know each other a little better as well as identify together the main current challenges and opportunities related to lignin and its valorisation.
When asked about the overall status of lignin in the Finnish research groups and in the industry, there was a consensus that on a global scale Finland is doing exceptionally well with lignin development -especially considering the relatively small size of the country. Key factors for this are understandably the long and prosperous history of the Finnish forest industry, but also the abundance of the primary resource of lignin – Finnish forests. Other identified contributing factors for the Finnish lignin development were, for example, the world’s largest integrated kraft lignin extraction plant in Kotka as well as the pioneering role of the two global technology suppliers Valmet and ANDRITZ placing strong emphasis on kraft lignin and consequently driving the Finnish lignin landscape forward. Lignin is also seen attractive in the start-up world where new biomaterial and technological innovations are constantly bubbling up, although attracting the much needed funding is always challenging to ensure steady growth and viable commercialisation routes for the innovations related to lignin. What is also beneficial for Finland is that the most rapidly developing lignin market globally is nearby in Europe, although South-America and Asia are also seen as emerging hotspots.
Project status in May 2025 and reflecting on the project preparation
To start reflecting on the SmartRecovery project, the initiative’s project manager Miriam Kellock recounted that the project officially came to its close recently in April 2025 and the VTT research team is now focusing on finalising an academic research article on membrane separation of kraft lignin, which will help to disseminate the project’s results to an even wider audience. Also, the project’s other key research partner Aalto University is busy finalising two different research papers related to the project – both discussing lignin characterisation in more detail.
It's also important to highlight the project preparation period prior to the actual project kicking off in January 2023, as Miriam detailed: “SmartRecovery was skilfully prepared by my former colleague Olesya Fearon, and I was supporting Olesya during the preparation phase. Olesya also had an elementary role in the project preparation contacting industrial partners and thus helping to shape up the SmartRecovery consortium to its final shape. Paavo Penttilä from Aalto University was very active in contacting international collaborators for the project, successfully linking us with the MAX IV synchrotron in Sweden and the Paderborn University in Germany.”
Both LignEasy and ANDRITZ had been identified early on as potential industrial partners, as Elina Lohiniva remembered from ANDRITZ’s side: “Anna Kalliola, Principal Scientist at VTT, had been our main VTT contact during the LigniOx BBI JU project during 2017-2022, so there was already a collaborative relationship in place, and as we heard about the project being under preparation under VTT’s coordination, we were ready to join the consortium.”
It was also important to reflect in general with the industrial partners on the importance of collaborative projects, as Elina detailed: “We at ANDRITZ are extremely excited about the newly launched BioCircleToZero R&D program and ecosystem enabled by Business Finland’s leading company (Veturi) funding scheme. This program will really push us forward and help us to systematically build even stronger networks with our existing as well as future partners.”
Juho-Matti Karpale also reflected on the importance of collaboration projects from the perspective of a growing start-up company: “For us as a smaller company it’s highly important to bravely take part in larger initiatives. In addition to the now ended SmartRecovery project, we are also part of the SciSustain project led by Aalto University. In general these sort of collaboration projects give us a great opportunity to engage with the wider value chain, and we are appreciative of the various collaboration opportunities enabled by Business Finland funded projects, for example.”
Discussing the main results of the project
Miriam as the project coordinator was clearly very proud to reflect on the main outcomes of the project: ”I’d say the main results of the project were very interesting from a research perspective. Kraft lignin separation with membrane filtration was one of the key topics for us, and perhaps most importantly we were excited to learn that our lignin materials worked very well in the energy storage applications. This naturally gives us a lot of encouragement when thinking about future commercial applications for the materials we have researched and developed. Another important aspect when discussing the main outcomes of the project is lignin characterisation and analytics. Traditionally analysing lignin has been very time consuming requiring specific expertise as well as advanced equipment. During SmartRecovery we were able to combine various analytical methods incl. FTIR spectroscopy for much quicker lignin analysis, which has real application potential in the industry for online analysis of lignin. We were fortunate to be able to include a visit to Sweden to carry out synchrotron measurements together with researchers from VTT, Aalto and Fortum, which was a great example of the collaborative spirit during the project.”
Paavo Penttilä continued on the lignin characterisation experiments: “I was very interested in the fundamental structure of lignin and how lignin behaves, thus developing basic understanding on both of these aspects of lignin was very important to me and my colleagues at Aalto University. We developed light scattering as a simple tool for lignin characterisation and as Miriam mentioned we were able to carry out interesting synchrotron experiments in Sweden to support our work. Already prior to SmartRecovery we had some rough ideas on similar research questions for lignin, so we were lucky to receive the initial contact from Olesya when the project was under preparation. It should also be noted that during the project we were able to use actual lignin samples from the industry, which was very exciting for us, and important when developing methods specifically with industrial use-cases in mind.”
Elina reflected on the project’s results from the perspective of ANDRITZ: “The initial hypothesis for us was that lignin microparticles would be the focus of the project, but we had to shift our plans during the project, which was very important. Overall we gained a lot of understanding on the topic of lignin in general with the honest feedback from the lignin end-users being especially valuable for us as technology developers. For us potentially developing new online analytical methods for lignin is naturally very interesting, so following that aspect of the project was very rewarding for us.”
Juho-Matti also shared some thoughts from the perspective of LignEasy: “Overall the project responded well to our targets. There is a clear need globally to efficiently extract lignin from kraft pulp mills and using technologies that do not disrupt the delicate chemical balances of the pulp mills are essential in this development. For us it’s extremely important to identify as many different potential end-use applications for lignin as possible, which will inevitably help the global lignin market to grow. It would be very important to utilise this precious biomaterial in novel value-added applications instead of only burning it for bioenergy. In that respect the project responded to major global challenges linked to lignin valorisation and utilisation.”
Next steps for the partners
Miriam was happy to reflect on the road ahead for lignin research: ”For us at VTT we are busy continuing on the SmartRecovery Co-Research project’s topics, and we are hoping to turn the upcoming continuation project to a Business Finland Co-Innovation initiative with realistic plans of submitting the funding application in autumn. Naturally we’re also always keeping a keen eye on any potential funding and collaborative opportunities arising from the EU related to the lignin theme.”
Paavo continued: ”We are concentrating on the lignin characterisation and method development at Aalto and my new working place at the University of Jyväskylä. The Co-Innovation funding scheme may not be directly suitable for us at the moment, but we are hoping to find collaboration partners to continue developing new analytical tools for lignin and other bio-based materials.”
Elina presented a glimpse into the future plans of ANDRITZ: ”As mentioned we are busy setting up and launching our newly funded Veturi R&D program and ecosystem. Within the next six months we will be closely assessing our RDI roadmap for lignin, so there will be undoubtedly plenty to do for lignin in the upcoming years within the ANDRITZ Veturi.”
LignEasy also has a clear plan for the future, as Juho-Matti explained: ”We are currently running a pilot facility based on our innovative technology at the LignoCity open test and development environment in Värmland, Sweden. Our next targets are closely linked to building and developing strong use cases together with our customers and lignin end-users. Our next projects will be mostly involving partnering schemes with pulp mills and scaling-up our technology from pilot scale towards industrial scale.”
Final thoughts on lignin
Looking back at the project and its outcomes was interesting as Miriam explained: “As discussed this was a very interesting project and we have truly gained a lot of knowledge on both kraft lignin and organosolv lignin. I also feel that we have only barely scratched the surface, and we just need to keep on doing high-quality research to keep the positive momentum going for lignin and truly unlock its huge potential. The industrial partners of SmartRecovery played a key role in guiding the research work along the right path, which was highly valuable for the researchers.”
Elina continued: ”Kraft lignin already has a wide array of potential end uses, but the market is only slowly opening up. There is a lot of buzz currently with many of the major forest companies related to lignin. The challenge is that the market requires a lot of lignin to be available in order to grow. In the April 3rd event’s workshop many people mentioned that the industry is looking for high value and high volume applications, which is always challenging and takes time. I’d personally like to see major things happening for lignin in the next five years, so to not lose the good momentum in this field. SmartRecovery was a great example of an expertly coordinated research effort by the VTT team, providing valuable building blocks to carry on the work further in the future.”
Juho-Matti concluded: ”We at LignEasy have especially looked at applications where lignin would be a drop-in type of raw material, and the lignin produced with our technology fits those requirements. The previously mentioned energy storage applications are highly interesting, but there’s still plenty to develop to reach commercial maturity. I truly hope we see feasible high value end-use cases for lignin in the upcoming years.”
SmartRecovery project factsheet
Project type: Business Finland Co-Research
Project duration: 01/2023 – 12/2024 (extended to 04/2025)
Research partners: Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT (coordinator) and Aalto University
Industry partners: ANDRITZ, Fortum, Chempolis, LignEasy, Metsä Fibre, Prefere Resins, ProSolve and Natural Element Oy