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Recent advances in the nutritional sciences have resulted in a large and steady flow of food ingredients with a measurable health effect. This has a two-fold effect on the food industry.

First, there is an increasing need to be able to prepare these ingredients in a food-grade fashion, with high yield and specificity, since any form of contamination with unwanted by-products may impede the application in a food product.

Second, while the industry is currently developing food products that incorporate these ingredients, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a knowledge gap in the field of how to optimally incorporate these ingredients in products, obtaining a safe product. Not only should they still be present in the final food product, but they should also be available in the right form and at the right place in the human gastrointestinal tract. The interaction between the functional ingredients and the food matrix of biopolymers and the interactions between the biopolymers, such as proteins and carbohydrates, is becoming a major item in food science. Te use of novel possibilities in processing creates an opportunity to establish the interactions and to preserve the food in a consumer friendly manner.

Wageningen University and Research Centre (Wageningen-UR) is in a unique position to remain a global player in the fields of industrial preparation of food ingredients and structures, that are so important to the Dutch and European industry.

The Agrotechnological Research centre ATO has a strong infrastructure in the field of processing, while Wageningen University (WU) has a strong expertise in the fields of ingredient science, structured products and processing. Both centres are internationally recognised for this.

There is however also a growing, global concentration of research in a limited number of research centres (e.g., Berlin, ETH, etc.). If Wageningen UR would lose its current position, this would dramatically affect the synchronisation of the research carried out in Wageningen to the Dutch and European food industry in a much broader sense. We therefore take the initiative to combine the largely complementary expertises of the two partners into one combined Centre, with a combined infrastructure and a combined knowledge development strategy.