Azores EcoBlue / Blue Growth Funding: Historical Reference

Azores EcoBlue / Blue Growth Funding: Historical Reference

This page is a historical reference, not an open grant listing. The official record identifies the relevant opportunity as the EEA Grants Portugal Blue Growth programme’s 2nd Notice 3: support for increasing resource efficiency linked to companies in the maritime sector. The notice closed on 31 May 2021, and the official sources do not announce a replacement round for this specific notice.

The Azores-related project connected with this call is Azores EcoBlue, promoted by Circular Blue, Lda. The project page is useful for understanding what was funded, but it should not be read as an invitation to submit a new application. The official archive presents the call as closed, while the project record reports the results of an award that has already been implemented.

Verified facts at a glance

The maximum support figure belongs to the call, not to each venture automatically. The €369,583 figure belongs to the Azores EcoBlue project record. These are different numbers with different meanings: one is a ceiling for an eligible project under the notice, and the other is the EEA Grants amount recorded for one funded project.

What Azores EcoBlue actually funded

The official project record describes a circular-economy response to marine litter connected with fishing activity in the Azores. The project aimed to collect fishing-related waste, characterise and quantify it, process it, and make the resulting information available through a statistical data-sharing platform. It also planned research into yarns and fibres made from the recovered material, with uses in fabrics and insulation blankets for construction. An eco-cabin prototype formed part of the demonstration concept.

That scope is narrower and more concrete than the old description of a general marine-tech or marine-biotech grant. The verified project is about the recovery and use of marine waste, applied research, material development, and demonstration. It is not evidence that the call accepted every ocean-data product, sustainable-fisheries service, marine sensor, or biotechnology proposal. A future applicant would need to match the exact notice that is open at that time rather than infer eligibility from the Azores EcoBlue project.

The official results section reports that the project collected more than 27 tonnes of waste, including plastics, maritime containers, and wooden vessels, for shipment to the mainland for recycling. It also reports new yarns and fibres used in fabrics and insulation blankets, sustainable ecolodge prototypes using recycled materials, and awareness and training activities involving people from fishing, handicrafts, design, and construction. Those results explain why the project belongs in the Blue Growth resource-efficiency category; they do not create a continuing application window.

Eligibility, corrected

The old page suggested that enterprises or research spin-offs registered in Portugal needed an Azores pilot site and a partnership with local fishing communities or research centres. That was too broad and included conditions not established by the official call summary.

The archived programme evaluation identifies the eligible promoter class for the 2nd Notice 3 as SMEs and large companies established legally in Portugal, with less than 25% public capital. This is the eligibility baseline to retain for historical context. The notice focused on companies in the maritime sector and on resource-efficiency work, including circular and green economy solutions, marine-litter collection, recycling, and reuse. The official project page shows that a company could work with universities, research centres, business associations, and regional technology organisations as partners, but it does not say that every applicant had to be a research spin-off or that every proposal needed a particular Azores fishing-community partnership.

Foreign founders should not confuse ownership with applicant eligibility. A non-Portuguese founder might participate through a Portuguese-registered company, but the archived summary describes the eligible promoter as a company legally established in Portugal. An organisation considering a future call would need to read the new notice for its own legal-form, public-capital, state-aid, co-financing, and partnership rules. Nothing on this archived page should be used to bypass those checks.

Amount and budget interpretation

The call’s archived maximum was €750,000 per project, with a 70% funding rate and a total call fund of €1.5 million. The call maximum was not a guaranteed award and was not a per-venture payment. A project still had to fit the notice, pass evaluation, and document its own eligible costs and financing structure.

Azores EcoBlue’s official record lists €369,583 in EEA Grants against a total project amount of €434,803. That record is the correct amount for the named Azores project. It replaces the unsupported per-venture amount in the old page. The amount also shows why a project page and a call page must be kept separate: the call set a ceiling, while the project record reports the award and total budget for one selected promoter.

For historical comparison, a serious budget under this type of notice would have needed a clear link between the resource-efficiency problem and the proposed work. In Azores EcoBlue, the link is visible: fishing-related waste was the input; collection, characterisation, processing, material research, and demonstration were the work packages; recycled materials and new products were the intended outputs. A generic budget for “marine innovation” would not communicate that chain well enough.

Application steps: what was appropriate for the closed notice

There is no current application process for this archived round. Do not create an IDIA-SG submission, reuse an old form, or treat the project page as a live application notice. If a successor opportunity is announced, use the new notice and its own application instructions.

For historical understanding, the correct sequence for the closed notice was:

1. Identify the exact Blue Growth 2nd Notice 3 and confirm that the applicant was an eligible company legally established in Portugal.
2. Read the notice and annexes for the resource-efficiency scope, eligible costs, funding rate, maximum support, public-capital condition, and required declarations.
3. Define a maritime-sector project with a specific resource problem, a credible technical solution, measurable outputs, and a budget that separated grant support from the applicant’s contribution.
4. Assemble the company, financial, technical, partnership, and compliance material required by the notice. Partnerships could strengthen delivery, but they did not change the promoter eligibility stated in the call summary.
5. Submit through the application route specified in the archived notice before 31 May 2021 at 12:00. That deadline has passed and cannot be revived by using the current Azores regional portal.

The last step is deliberately historical. There is no basis for writing a new deadline or claiming that late submissions remain possible. The page is marked as a historical reference so readers can understand the funding record without mistaking it for an available opportunity.

How to use this page now

Use this entry for three limited purposes:

• to understand the scale and subject of the closed Blue Growth notice;
• to compare a prospective circular maritime project with a real Azores example;
• to find the official project record and confirm the named promoter, partners, funding, and reported outputs.

Do not use it to infer that the date in the previous version was official. The official call archive records 31 May 2021, and the official project record identifies Azores EcoBlue rather than a generic blue-economy grant. The archived project page also links to the programme’s call and document sections, which are the right places to check if EEA Grants Portugal publishes a new notice in the future.

If a new notice appears, start a fresh verification pass. Check its publication and closing dates, eligible legal forms, geography, funding rate, maximum award, co-financing rules, eligible costs, and submission channel. Then compare the proposed work against the notice’s actual objective. A project involving marine sensors or ocean data may be relevant to another programme, but it should not be attached to this historical entry without a direct official match.

Practical fit test for a future successor call

The Azores EcoBlue example gives a useful but limited test. A strong future proposal in the same family would be able to name the maritime waste or resource-efficiency problem, show who supplies or controls the relevant material, explain the treatment or reuse process, and specify how performance will be measured. It would also show why the applicant is capable of operating in Portugal and how partners contribute without obscuring the promoter’s legal responsibility.

For a material-reuse project, useful evidence might include a baseline quantity of waste, collection arrangements, processing yields, product specifications, quality or safety testing, and a route to continued use after grant support. For a data or service project, the applicant would need to connect the digital work to the call’s resource-efficiency objective rather than rely on a broad blue-economy label. These are planning prompts, not requirements carried over from a future notice.

The main lesson is accuracy about status. This was a real EEA Grants Portugal Blue Growth call, and Azores EcoBlue was a real funded project. The call closed on 31 May 2021; the project record reports €369,583 in EEA Grants and €434,803 in total project funding; and no current cycle is confirmed on the official archive. Readers should therefore treat this page as an archive entry and look for a separately published successor before preparing an application.

Official sources

• EEA Grants Portugal: Azores EcoBlue project record — promoter, partners, funding amounts, programme, project scope, and reported results.
• EEA Grants Portugal: Blue Growth calls archive — closed-call listing for the 2nd Notice 3 and its 31 May 2021 deadline.
• EEA Grants Portugal programme evaluation — archived call objective, eligible promoter class, maximum support, funding rate, and call fund.