KERRY INGREDIENTS (IRELAND) LIMITED

Their core work

Kerry Ingredients (Ireland) Limited is the R&D and manufacturing arm of Kerry Group, one of the world's largest food ingredients and nutrition companies. Their H2020 engagement focuses specifically on enzyme-driven processing of plant-based raw materials — first targeting vegetable proteins for functional hydrolysates, and more recently exploring novel enzymes capable of breaking down xylan, a plant cell wall polysaccharide. They bring industrial-scale knowledge of food ingredient development to academic research consortia, providing the application context and commercial validation that academic partners typically lack. Their participation in EU projects is strategically narrow: they invest where enzyme biotechnology intersects with plant-based ingredient functionality.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 project (2017–2019), Kerry focused on the applied end of food biotechnology: using enzymes as processing tools to generate functional hydrolysates from vegetable proteins — a direct input to product formulation. By their second project (2021–2025), the lens had shifted upstream: instead of applying known enzymes, they are now involved in mining microbes and using computational modelling to discover entirely new enzyme classes targeting xylan. This shift moves Kerry from ingredient application toward enzyme discovery, suggesting growing confidence in and appetite for earlier-stage biotechnology research.

Kerry is moving up the R&D value chain — from using enzymes to make ingredients, toward discovering novel enzymes computationally, which points to a future interest in proprietary enzyme platforms for plant-based and fibre-rich food systems.

How they like to work

Kerry has taken both the host role (as MSCA-IF coordinator for VegProtein, meaning they provided an industrial research environment for a Marie Curie Fellow) and a participant role in a larger multi-partner RIA. This combination — one intimate, company-hosted fellowship and one broader consortium — suggests they engage EU projects selectively and strategically rather than as a serial consortium builder. Their 12 unique partners across 10 countries from just two projects reflects diverse but non-repeat collaboration, consistent with a large company dipping into academic networks on a project-by-project basis.

Kerry has worked with 12 unique consortium partners across 10 countries in two projects, a broad geographic footprint for a two-project portfolio. No partner overlap is visible between their two projects, indicating they connect to different research networks depending on the scientific topic.

What sets them apart

Kerry Ingredients is unusually positioned as a large, non-SME private company engaging directly in fundamental enzyme research — most industrial companies of this scale would license or acquire rather than participate in discovery-stage EU projects. This means they bring something rare to a consortium: the direct line from bench research to a commercial ingredient pipeline with global distribution. A researcher or SME partnering with Kerry gains not just co-funding, but a credible route to industrial validation and eventual market entry for their enzyme or ingredient technology.

Highlights from their portfolio

• VegProtein
  Kerry served as coordinator and industrial host for a Marie Curie Individual Fellow, making this a rare example of a large food company directly sponsoring and directing early-stage academic research on plant protein functionality.
• EnXylaScope
  This RIA project combines microbial bioprospecting with big-data and computational modelling to unlock novel xylan-degrading enzymes — a technically ambitious topic that signals Kerry's move into data-driven ingredient discovery.