The global population growth, the growing size of the global middle class and consumption by wealthy households, drives the climate crisis. As earth’s resources are limited, the availability of needs to be reformed to be in line with the planet’s raw material capacities, for example by expanding the supply of industrial raw materials to renewable and recycled materials. It will be furthermore crucial to develop business models to meet up with the principles of a circular economy. We live in a time of transition, where concerns about climate change, biodiversity loss, and overconsumption of virgin resources, are in the focus of an intense societal debate. These concerns are also considered in the development of corporate business practices. There are several Finnish companies developing scalable technologies for processing various biomasses and recycled materials into new raw materials for industry use. These companies play a key role in the realisation of an industrial bioeconomy and a circular economy. They are also critical when establishing a new, sustainable industrial sector in Finland. To support the development of this new field of industrial activity, it is important to form functional value chains by bringing together companies with different roles in the value chain; i.e. companies delivering raw materials, companies refining the raw-materials, and companies that develop new sustainable and recyclable end-products from the refined raw-material. For example, in the Nordic countries, common reed is currently an under-exploited cellulosic renewable raw material that can be used in production of similar end-products as of forest biomass. Introduction of such a new material in large-scale to be used as an industrial raw material, is an opportunity for Finland when aiming at internationally competitive industrial business. The BioDemo project strengthens the business and innovation activities Turku region’s bio and circular economies. Activities carried out within the project framework include, facilitation, stakeholder engagement, and research, as well as building up a common understanding of the possibilities to industrialize within bio- and circular economy activities in the region. The target is to bring together companies into value chains and demonstrate the functionality of the value chains on pilot scale. As a result, companies in the Turku region have demonstrated the viability of bio and/or circular economy value chains, based on local raw materials such as straw, common reed, and recycled textile fibres. The companies that participate in the demonstrations, will gain valuable knowledge on how to develop their business towards bio and circular economies. Another important outcome of the project will be a better shared understanding of the availability of bio-based raw materials, such as straw and common reed, in the Turku region. Also, a better understanding of how these raw materials meet the needs of businesses and industry, will be acquired. The EU's horizontal principles are sustainable development, equality, and non-discrimination. The goal of sustainable development is to ensure that future generations have equal or better opportunities than current generations. Specifically, the BioDemo project supports sustainable and resource-wise bio and circular economy-based business activities in the Turku region and assists the region in achieving the goal of carbon neutrality. The BioDemo project is carried out as a group project between Turku Science Park, Åbo Akademi and Turku University of Applied Sciences.