KONINKLIJKE COOPERATIE COSUN UA

Their core work

Royal Cosun is a major Dutch agricultural cooperative that processes sugar beets, vegetables, and other crops into food ingredients and bio-based products. In H2020, they focused on extracting high-value compounds from agricultural processing side-streams — turning sugarbeet pulp into functional products and vegetable waste into proteins. They also engaged with advanced plant breeding for chicory-derived dietary fibres and medicinal compounds. Their work sits at the intersection of large-scale agri-food processing and circular bioeconomy.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Royal Cosun's earlier H2020 projects (2015-2016) focused on industrial biorefinery — extracting value from bulk agricultural waste like sugarbeet pulp and vegetable remnants. Their later involvement (2018, CHIC project) shifted toward advanced breeding technologies such as CRISPR/Cas and cisgenesis applied to specialty crops like chicory. This suggests a progression from downstream processing of existing crops toward upstream crop improvement for targeted bioactive compounds.

Moving from processing agricultural waste into designing crops that produce higher-value compounds from the start — expect future interest in precision fermentation and tailored crop varieties.

How they like to work

Royal Cosun predominantly leads projects — coordinating 2 out of 3 H2020 engagements, both large-scale BBI demonstration actions. With 35 unique partners across 14 countries, they build broad European consortia rather than working in small clusters. As a large cooperative with real processing infrastructure, they likely serve as the industrial demonstration site and end-user validation partner in their consortia.

Collaborated with 35 distinct partners across 14 countries, reflecting a wide European network. Their BBI demonstration projects required diverse value chains — from research institutes to technology providers to downstream users.

What sets them apart

Royal Cosun brings something rare to consortia: they are not a research lab or a tech startup, but a large-scale agricultural cooperative with real factories processing millions of tonnes of crops annually. This means they can take lab-scale biorefinery concepts and test them at industrial demonstration scale. For anyone developing bio-based food ingredients, plant proteins, or crop-derived bioactives, Cosun offers the infrastructure and market access that most academic partners cannot.

Highlights from their portfolio

• PULP2VALUE
  Largest project (EUR 3.5M EC funding), coordinated by Cosun — a flagship BBI demonstration of sugarbeet pulp valorization into commercial products.
• GreenProtein
  Coordinated EUR 2M BBI project on plant protein recovery from vegetable waste, directly aligned with Europe's protein transition goals.
• CHIC
  Represents Cosun's move into CRISPR/cisgenesis plant breeding — a strategic shift from processing waste to engineering better crops.