LAND LIFE COMPANY BV

Their core work

Land Life Company is a Dutch reforestation technology SME best known for the Cocoon — a biodegradable water reservoir that enables tree planting in arid and degraded lands without irrigation. Their commercial work centers on large-scale land restoration, turning degraded terrain into functioning ecosystems using circular economy materials (the Cocoon is made from recycled paper). In EU research, they contribute real-world deployment experience and proprietary restoration hardware to consortia working on dryland reclamation, anti-desertification, and forest biodiversity. More recently they have moved into ecosystem services assessment and forest management frameworks, signaling a broadening from product-led restoration to science-backed landscape-level impact.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Between 2016 and 2018, Land Life Company was focused squarely on product commercialisation: optimising a circular-economy restoration device (the Cocoon) for deployment in arid, degraded, and desertified land — keywords like anti-desertification, dryland restoration, revitalise arid land, and mycorrhiza all point to an applied technology agenda in harsh climates. By 2021 their H2020 engagement had shifted decisively toward temperate forest systems: forest biodiversity, forest resilience, integrated forest management, and close-to-nature forestry replace the arid-land vocabulary entirely. The evolution suggests the company has successfully moved from proving a single product to positioning itself as a broader ecosystem restoration actor with scientific credibility in European forest policy and biodiversity frameworks.

Land Life Company is moving from hardware-led dryland restoration toward ecosystem-scale forest management and biodiversity science, which positions them well for EU Nature Restoration Law implementation projects and large-scale afforestation financing mechanisms.

How they like to work

Land Life Company has participated exclusively as a consortium partner across both projects — they have never coordinated an H2020 project. Despite only two projects, they have accumulated 40 unique partners across 16 countries, which implies involvement in large, multi-actor Innovation Actions rather than tight bilateral collaborations. This breadth with no repeated coordinator relationships suggests they are brought in as a specialist technology provider — valued for their Cocoon product and restoration deployment expertise — rather than as a network hub or project manager.

With 40 unique consortium partners across 16 countries from just two projects, their network is broad but shallow — each project appears to have introduced them to an entirely new set of research and industry actors. Their geographic footprint spans well beyond the Netherlands, reflecting the pan-European scope of both large Innovation Actions they joined.

What sets them apart

Land Life Company occupies a rare niche in EU research consortia: they are a commercial technology company that sells a physical product (the Cocoon) proven at scale in real restoration projects, not a research group generating knowledge in a lab. This means they can contribute field-validated deployment data, commercial production know-how, and circular economy material credentials that purely academic or consultancy partners cannot. For consortium builders working on Nature Restoration, afforestation, or land degradation projects, they provide both the technology demonstration component and a direct route to market uptake.

Highlights from their portfolio

• FTI Cocoon
  This Fast Track to Innovation project (2016-2018) was the largest single funding award for the company (EUR 670,469) and directly targeted commercialisation of their flagship biodegradable water-reservoir product for dryland restoration — a rare example of EU research funding tied to a specific, commercially deployable physical technology.
• SUPERB
  SUPERB (2021-2025) is a flagship Horizon Europe-era ecosystem restoration project with a long duration and broad scientific scope, signalling Land Life Company's successful move into mainstream EU forest biodiversity research beyond their original product-focused mandate.