SCHUTTELAAR & PARTNERS, CONSULTANCY FOR FOOD AND LIFESCIENCES NV

Their core work

Schuttelaar & Partners is a Brussels-based consultancy specialising in strategic advisory and business innovation for the food and life sciences sectors. They help agri-food companies navigate digital transformation, connect with innovation ecosystems, and translate technology developments into commercially viable strategies. In their EU project work they have contributed business development expertise to large-scale IoT pilots in food and farming, and to the rollout of digital innovation hubs across European agriculture. Their value is bridging the gap between research outputs and food sector business reality — turning scientific results into actionable market intelligence.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their earlier H2020 work (IoF2020, 2017), S&P focused on the operational and commercial side of IoT adoption in farming — smart farming pilots, data-driven farming models, and integrating IoT into food chains. Their more recent engagement (SmartAgriHubs, 2018) shifted upstream toward ecosystem building: digital innovation hubs, open calls, competence centres, and smart specialisation strategies. The direction is clear: from helping businesses adopt digital agriculture tools to shaping the institutional infrastructure that governs how digital agriculture innovation spreads across Europe.

S&P is moving from technology adoption advisory into innovation policy and ecosystem architecture — a profile increasingly sought by regional authorities, clusters, and consortia designing the next generation of agri-food innovation programmes.

How they like to work

S&P participates exclusively as a consortium partner and has not taken a coordinating role in either of their H2020 projects. Both projects they joined were very large, multi-partner initiatives — IoF2020 and SmartAgriHubs are among the flagship EU agri-digital programmes, each involving dozens of partners — suggesting S&P is comfortable as a specialist contributor within complex structures rather than a project driver. Their 186 unique consortium partners across just 2 projects reflects the sheer scale of these flagship initiatives rather than an unusually broad bilateral network.

Through their two projects, S&P has been embedded in consortia spanning 25 countries and 186 unique partner organisations — an unusually wide reach for a two-project portfolio, entirely a function of the flagship scale of IoF2020 and SmartAgriHubs. Their network is European in breadth with a likely practical concentration in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Northern Europe given their Brussels base and agri-food consultancy origins.

What sets them apart

S&P occupies a specific niche that few organisations fill cleanly: a private, SME-scale consultancy with both food sector domain knowledge and demonstrated experience inside large-scale EU digital agriculture programmes. Unlike academic partners, they bring commercial and market strategy credibility; unlike large integrators, they are lean and focused exclusively on food and life sciences. For any consortium that needs to connect IoT or digital agriculture technology to real food industry adoption pathways, S&P adds a business translation layer that purely technical partners cannot provide.

Highlights from their portfolio

• IoF2020
  One of the largest EU IoT pilots ever run in the agri-food sector, with over €30M total budget; S&P's participation signals recognised standing in food sector business innovation at flagship scale.
• SmartAgriHubs
  A pan-European digital innovation hub initiative connecting 160+ hubs across 28 countries; S&P's involvement in open calls and competence centre strategy points to a policy-advisory role beyond standard project consultancy.