Europe is preparing for a transition from a fossil- to a bio-based economy and this European Bioeconomy offers, as described in the EC Strategy Paper and Action plan “Innovating for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe”, a comprehensive answer to key societal challenges, like creating and maintaining jobs, maintaining the competitiveness of the European Process Industries, adaptation to climate change, reducing the dependency on non-renewable feedstocks and “more with less” strategy on renewable biomass used for food, added value chemicals and energy.Due to its extensive scope and complex character such a transition is expected to take at least 1 to 2 decades. The current starting position for Europe on the biotechnological production of added value chemicals from renewable biomass is still very good, with its leading scientific position on industrial White Biotechnology, the global top positions of the European chemical and agro-food industries and the sophisticated logistic infrastructure, but there is a urgent need to go to commercial exploitation to prevent that Europe loses its strong position to faster acting competing economies.In this framework, an entrepreneurial consortium was built with the joint ambition to generate hard evidence and collect all technical/economic key design parameters needed for investment decisions for the first industrial production plants for the bio-based building blocks 1,4 butanediol and itaconic acid, which would definitely contribute to guiding these 2 important bio-based chemical building blocks through the notorious “Innovation Valley of Death” to industrial deployment. The consortium is based on strong industrial leadership on both of the selected products, and covers the full supply chains for bio-based BDO and IA. The planned demonstrations are solidly based on preceding research results originating from the KBBE Flagship Project BioConSepT and the internal research programs of the industrial partners.