SYNTESA PARTNERS AND ASSOCIATES SL

Their core work

Syntesa Partners and Associates is a Spanish innovation consultancy that helps agricultural businesses and technology providers navigate digital transformation and translate research into commercially viable products. Their work centres on bridging the gap between research consortia and the farming sector — contributing business design, multi-actor facilitation, and technology adoption expertise rather than pure technical R&D. In SmartAgriHubs they helped connect Digital Innovation Hubs with the agricultural community across Europe, while in ClearFarm they brought design thinking and co-design methodology to the development of a welfare monitoring platform for pig and dairy cattle. They operate as an agile SME partner that adds business-side intelligence to technically heavy research projects.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 project (2018), Syntesa operated at the ecosystem level — connecting digital innovation hubs, smart farming platforms, competence centres, and open call programmes to accelerate broad digital adoption in European agriculture. By their second project (2019), their focus had sharpened dramatically toward a specific subsector: pig and dairy cattle, with an emphasis on sensor-based welfare monitoring, blockchain traceability, GHG accounting, and hands-on pilot deployment. The trajectory is clearly from wide facilitation of digital transformation to deep, application-specific work in precision livestock farming.

Syntesa appears to be moving from broad digital-agriculture facilitation toward applied livestock technology — making them an increasingly relevant partner for projects combining animal welfare, food supply chain transparency, and environmental compliance.

How they like to work

Syntesa has always joined projects as a participant, never leading as coordinator, which positions them as a specialist contributor rather than a project driver. Both of their projects were large Innovation Actions with massive multi-partner consortia — 131 unique partners across just two projects — suggesting they are comfortable operating within complex, multi-stakeholder structures. This tells prospective partners they can expect a collaborative, process-oriented partner who brings methodological expertise without competing for project leadership.

Despite only two projects, Syntesa has accumulated 131 unique consortium partners across 24 countries, a footprint entirely explained by participation in very large pan-European Innovation Actions. Their network is broad but shallow — reflecting the scale of SmartAgriHubs and ClearFarm rather than repeated bilateral relationships.

What sets them apart

Syntesa occupies an uncommon niche: a small Spanish consultancy that brings structured business methodology — co-design, multi-actor facilitation, design thinking — into technically driven agricultural research consortia. Most agri-food SMEs in H2020 are technology developers or farm operators; Syntesa appears to be neither, focusing instead on the process of making technology land in real farm and market contexts. For a consortium that already has strong technical partners but needs someone to handle stakeholder engagement, pilot design, and business model validation, Syntesa fills a role that pure research institutes cannot.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ClearFarm
  Largest grant (EUR 123,445) and most technically specific engagement, combining precision livestock monitoring, blockchain labelling, GHG accounting, and on-farm pilots in a single co-designed platform for pig and dairy cattle.
• SmartAgriHubs
  One of the flagship digital agriculture initiatives in H2020, spanning 160+ partners and dozens of countries — Syntesa's participation signals credibility in pan-European digital transformation networks.