10 August 2023
Founded in 1865, Cargill is a privately held American global food & agriculture corporation based in Minnesota. Some of their major businesses are trading and distributing agricultural commodities like grain and producing food ingredients such as starch and vegetable oils and fats. Nils Sips is R&D Director Technical Service & Commercial Excellence at Cargill, and he talks about the added value of partnering with a food innovation network like Brave New Food.
“With about 350 people working on R&D just in Europe, you would expect that a company like Cargill doesn’t need any extra help on the innovation side. But there you’re wrong. We are constantly looking to connect with new fast-growing companies with fresh ideas and a can-do attitude. They inspire us.” Nils continues: “We find these kinds of startups via the various communities and accelerators we are connected with, and in international networks like Brave New Food.”
High success rate
Nils has been working with Brave New Food for two years where he focuses on ingredients. Via innovation challenges and matchmaking events he has been able to connect with many new startups and scale-ups. “I always try to find out what the other side is looking for. If it’s funding only, I cannot do much. But if it’s market access, supply chain, or R&D cooperation, we have something to explore together.” Nils is happy about the success rate of the matchmaking conversations. “I would say that about 10 percent of the leads actually convert into new agreements. Just because of this, Brave New Food proves to be a huge time-saver for me and the whole department!” One example of a new collaboration is with PectCof, a company that converts coffee pulp into valuable food ingredients. They participated in two Brave New Food innovation challenges last year and drew Nils’ attention.
‘Not invented here’
A strong R&D capability is of course a great asset for a food corporate, but it doesn’t guarantee the best results. Nils explains: “One of the pitfalls of in-house innovation is the ‘not invented here’ attitude. That’s a suffocating dynamic in which many great opportunities remain undiscovered or even get dismissed. We try to connect the rapid developments in the startup scene with our own project teams. So, when Brave New Food presents us with new startup leads, we review them with a group of 4 or 5 colleagues and connect them to different teams who can follow up on the new developments. That way we ensure that we stay action-oriented and challenged by new and exciting technologies and products.”
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