CITROMIL SL

Their core work

CITROMIL SL is an agrifood company based in Santomera, Murcia — one of Spain's most intensive agricultural zones for citrus and vegetable production. They operate as an industrial actor in the food processing or packaging supply chain, generating the kind of residues and waste streams that make them a relevant industrial partner in circular economy research. Their EU participation focuses on recovering value from agrifood waste, spanning filtration-based recovery technologies and the upcycling of packaging materials such as multilayer plastics. As an SME embedded in a specific agricultural territory, they bring real-world waste volumes and regional industrial context to European research consortia.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

The first project (AFTERLIFE, 2017) had no keywords captured in the data, but its title points to filtration and fractionation of waste streams — a technology-oriented, process-level intervention. By 2021 with Agro2Circular, the focus had broadened to a territorial systems approach, encompassing upcycling, digitalisation, and packaging waste. The shift signals movement from individual process technology toward integrated, regional circular economy infrastructure.

CITROMIL is moving toward larger-scope circular economy roles — from single-technology pilot partner to participant in territorial, multi-actor systems — suggesting growing interest in becoming a regional anchor for agrifood waste valorization.

How they like to work

CITROMIL participates exclusively as a consortium partner, never as a project coordinator, indicating they contribute industrial capacity and domain knowledge rather than leading research programs. Both projects involve very large consortia (55 partners across 2 projects), suggesting they are comfortable operating within complex multi-stakeholder collaborations. They likely fill the role of industrial end-user or demonstration host — providing real production environments where technologies can be tested at scale.

CITROMIL has collaborated with 55 unique partners across 14 countries through just 2 projects, suggesting they join large, geographically diverse consortia. Their network skews toward the European agrifood and bioeconomy research community.

What sets them apart

As a small agrifood company embedded in Murcia's agricultural heartland, CITROMIL brings something that universities and research institutes cannot: access to real industrial waste volumes in an active food production region. For a consortium needing a credible agrifood SME end-user in southern Europe — particularly one with exposure to citrus or vegetable processing residues — CITROMIL fills a gap that larger or more generic partners cannot. Their combination of multilayer plastics experience and territorial circular economy work is uncommon among Spanish SMEs at this scale.

Highlights from their portfolio

• Agro2Circular
  Their largest project (EUR 258,108 funding), framed as a territorial-scale circular economy solution with digitalisation and packaging waste components — reflecting ambitions beyond single-process R&D.
• AFTERLIFE
  Their first EU project, focused on advanced filtration for waste stream recovery — an early signal of commitment to circular economy before the EU Green Deal made it mainstream.