SHANGDONG NEW HOPE LIUHE LLC

Their core work

Shandong New Hope Liuhe is one of China's major agribusiness enterprises, headquartered in Qingdao, with operations spanning animal feed, livestock breeding, poultry, and food processing at industrial scale. In EU research consortia, they participate as an industry end-user and large-scale commercial operator, providing real-world deployment context that academic and SME partners cannot replicate. Their two H2020 engagements address antimicrobial resistance in livestock production and the digital transformation of food safety systems — both areas where an operator of their industrial scale brings critical validation and implementation capacity. They are not a research organization; they are the industrial partner that makes research outcomes commercially credible.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first H2020 project (2018) was squarely biological: biosecurity protocols, disease resilience, animal welfare, and antibiotic reduction — the pressing on-farm challenges of a livestock operator. Their second project (2020) pivoted toward digital infrastructure for food safety monitoring, signaling a shift from managing biological risk to digitizing the systems that track and govern food quality. With only two projects it is premature to call this a firm trajectory, but the direction — from farm biosecurity toward digital food safety management — aligns with the broader industry transition happening in large agribusiness globally.

They appear to be moving from biological risk management toward digitally-enabled food safety systems — a partner useful not just for animal health projects but increasingly for agri-food digitalization initiatives.

How they like to work

They participate exclusively as consortium partners and have never coordinated an H2020 project, which is typical for large industrial companies that contribute operational scale and end-user validation rather than research leadership. Their 57 unique partners across 14 countries from just 2 projects indicates they join large, internationally diverse consortia rather than tight bilateral arrangements. This profile suggests they are brought in to anchor the commercial deployment and industrial-scale validation dimension of applied food and agriculture research.

Despite only two projects, they have accumulated 57 unique consortium partners across 14 countries — a signal of participation in large, pan-European consortia with broad international reach. As a Chinese company active in EU-funded research, they function as a rare Asia–Europe bridge in the food and agriculture research space.

What sets them apart

They are one of very few large Chinese agribusiness companies with direct H2020 participation, giving them a distinctive position as an Asia–Europe industrial connector in food and agriculture research. For consortia seeking to validate findings at commercial scale or demonstrate global applicability beyond Europe, a partner operating large livestock and food processing operations in China provides a validation context that no European partner can substitute. Their non-SME industrial scale also means they can absorb and test research outputs under the production pressures that actually determine whether innovations survive contact with reality.

Highlights from their portfolio

• HealthyLivestock
  A major 5-year RIA addressing antimicrobial resistance across livestock systems — one of EU agriculture's highest-priority challenges — with Shandong New Hope Liuhe bringing large-scale commercial livestock production into a predominantly European research consortium.
• DiTECT
  Focuses on digital technology as a continuous driver of food safety system transformation, representing a pivot from biological toward data-driven food safety — and running to 2024, making it their most recent and forward-looking engagement.