[Elli Maria Barampouti]

The increasing deployment of anaerobic digestion across Europe has led to a significant rise in digestate production. While land application remains the most common outlet, there is growing interest in moving beyond this traditional approach toward higher-value valorisation pathways.
This raises an important question for our community:
How can we best transform digestate from a by-product into a portfolio of marketable, high-value products?
Several technological routes are currently being explored, including:
-Nutrient recovery (e.g. ammonium salts, concentrated fertilisers)
-Production of bio-based soil amendments such as biochar-enriched materials
-Integration into biorefinery schemes for producing biochemicals
-Use as a substrate for algae or microbial protein production
However, multiple challenges remain:
-Economic feasibility at scale
-Product standardisation and quality consistency
-Regulatory acceptance across different Member States
-Market uptake and farmer confidence
At the same time, there is a clear opportunity to align digestate valorisation with broader EU strategies such as the EU Circular Economy Action Plan and the Farm to Fork Strategy, reinforcing sustainability and resource efficiency.
I would be very interested to hear your views on:
-Which valorisation pathways do you consider the most promising in the short vs long term?
-Are there successful business models or pilot cases worth highlighting?
-What are the key bottlenecks that still need to be addressed?

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