ALEHOOP’s 5th General Assembly Meeting

After a remote Kick Off Meeting and several online meetings and general assemblies, at last it was possible for most of the consortium to see each other’s faces outside of the computer screens. Two years working in the distance and at our 5^th General Assembly meeting, ALEHOOP project’s members had the opportunity to discuss and debate in person in this hybrid meeting. Luckily, the majority of the consortium was able to travel until the location of the meeting: the beautiful, and currently very Christmassy, city of Vigo in Galicia, northwest Spain.

ANFACO was the kind organizer of the meeting, which took place in their facilities during the 30^th of November and the 1^st of December. The first day in the morning, despite the rain and the fog, the team gathered there and received the welcome of Nuria Valdés from Contactica (our coordinator) as well as Gonzalo Ojea and Diego Méndez from ANFACO, who started the meeting. After, half of the work packages’ progresses of these last 6 months were explained by each leader, with the help of the rest of each team. A lot of interesting conclusions and results were exposed and everybody could ask questions and debate, both online and in person, as it was a hybrid meeting.

After these first presentations, the in person-attendants participated on a guided tour through ANFACO’s facilities. We visited the plant as well as the labs, where many tests take place. Seeing the equipment that ANFACO’s team uses in their everyday work was nice, as the rest of the consortium could see how they carry out their research and what kind of machinery they use for their tests. And, in particular for ALEHOOP project, the machine which cleanses the algae and rinses away all the remaining salt and/or impurities that can accumulate before any process takes place.