Südzucker Group wins EIT Food Corporate Startup Collaboration Award

After winning the EIT Food Corporate Startup Collaboration Award for the first time in 2022, Südzucker Group won for the second time at the EIT Food Next Bite 2024 Event in Rome! This award recognises collaboration excellence between established corporations and innovative startups in the AgriFoodTech sector.

EIT Food’s network of startups was asked to rate their collaborations with established companies, giving feedback on criteria such as corporate partner’s mission alignment, speed of decision-making, entrepreneurial spirit and understanding of the startups’ ways of working.

“Once again, we asked EIT Food affiliated startups to tell us which companies were particular good collaboration counterparts. It is exciting to hear that more than 30 companies were nominated this year! We see more corporates engaging with startups and working hard on being faster, streamlining their processes and establishing an internal innovation mindset. It’s a pleasure to see the Südzucker Group get this award. They have engaged with many startups and it is great to hear that the quality of those engagements is high. Congratulations!" - Dr. Christoph Mandl, Head of Corporate Venturing.

Check out thebarn.io, an Open Innovation Platform powered by Südzucker Group, a team consisting of passionate “planthusiasts”, food innovators, bioeconomy specialists and entrepreneurial agronomists, who share a vision of creating a more sustainable agri-food sector.

Südzucker Group is a major player in the food industry with its sugar, special products, starch and fruit segments, and Europe's leading ethanol producer with its CropEnergies segment. In the traditional sugar business, the group is Europe’s number one supplier of sugar products, with 23 sugar factories and two refineries, extending from France in the west via Belgium, Germany and Austria, through to Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bosnia, and Moldova in the east. The special products segment, with its consumer-oriented functional ingredients for food and animal feed (BENEO), chilled/frozen products (Freiberger) and portion packs (PortionPack Europe), operates in dynamic growth markets. Südzucker's CropEnergies segment is Europe's leading producer of renewable ethanol, with production sites in Germany, Belgium, France and Great Britain. Other products in this segment are protein food and animal feed products as well as biogenic carbon dioxide. The new starch segment comprises AGRANA's starch and ethanol activities. The group’s fruit segment operates globally, is the world market leader for fruit preparations and is a leading supplier of fruit juice concentrates in Europe. In 2020/21, the group employed about 17,900 persons and generated revenues of EUR 6.7 billion.

EIT Food is the world’s largest and most dynamic food innovation community. We accelerate innovation to build a future-fit food system that produces healthy and sustainable food for all. 

Supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union, we invest in projects, organisations and individuals that share our goals for a healthy and sustainable food system. We unlock innovation potential in businesses and universities, and create and scale agrifood startups to bring new technologies and products to market. We equip entrepreneurs and professionals with the skills needed to transform the food system and put consumers at the heart of our work, helping build trust by reconnecting them to the origins of their food.

We are one of eight innovation communities established by the European Institute for Innovation & Technology (EIT), an independent EU body set up in 2008 to drive innovation and entrepreneurship across Europe. 

EIT Food Corporate Venturing empowers the agrifood industry to identify, collaborate and integrate impactful startup technologies. Since 2020, the Corporate Venturing team has analysed more than 7.000 startup companies from EU and IL and made more than 1.000 personalized introductions to corporate innovators. After an in-depth evaluation process, most promising startups are invited to a dedicated matchmaking demo day with established companies from the agrifood industry. In 2023 these demos resulted in more than 50 collaborations between startups and industry protected under NDA.

For more information visit: https://www.eitfood.eu/entrepreneurship/corporate-venturing