Sustainable polysaccharide/protein rich ingredients from natural and mild treatments (SPRINT) is a multidisciplinary public-private partnership (PPP) which aims to achieve breakthroughs in developing sustainable, multi-functional, clean label ingredients for food manufacturers from available

co-products within the agri-foodindustry. The consortium, represented by stakeholders from across the food production chain comes together to fill the knowledge gaps between demand and supply that is application focused and functionality driven. The increasing consumer focus towards natural and clean label foods and the emphasis on implementing total use are the main drivers for SPRINT.

The main innovation goal of the consortium is to create a technology toolbox for the biorefinery of co-products leading to the production of multi-functional, clean label ingredients for added value in staple food products. SPRINT will provide the necessary infrastructure to evaluate co-products, design biorefinery, and produce clean label ingredients. This will be achieved using a reverse engineering approach where applications and required functionalities are at the forefront of designing biorefineries. It is foreseen that SPRINT will shorten time to market of multi-functional, clean label ingredients. Food manufacturers are currently faced with the challenge of removing or replacing artificial or unrecognizable food additives in order to address the consumer demand for more affordable, natural, less processed, high quality food products. However, there is a lack of available food and ingredients that the food industry can use to meet all these expectations. In addition, there are rarely natural food ingredients and additives that meet all the functionality requirements in specific product applications. At the same time, the agri-foodindustry is currently faced with the challenge to reduce discharge to the environment and foster total use of raw materials in an economical feasibly way. They are searching for added value in existing co-products and technical solutions to obtain this.

SPRINT will close the knowledge gaps and will speed up the evaluation of ingredient demand from the food manufacturers using co-product supply from the agri-foodindustry. The toolbox envisaged contains among others predictive mathematic models that are validated using food model systems in combination with new ingredients obtained from agri-food co-products natural and mild processing. SPRINT will develop value added consumer food products using a science driven reformulation approaches. In addition, SPRINT will also develop functionality-driven biorefineries based on combined fractionation and modification strategies (e.g. physical treatment, enzyme/fermentation technologies, SMB technology, among others). Ultimately, the results of SPRINT will help both food manufacturers to meet the growing consumer demand for clean label food products with improved organoleptic qualities, extended shelf life and enhanced health benefits, and the agri-food industry to develop high value application routes for their industrial co-products. Ultimately, SPRINT contributes to the realization of a total use concept thereby addressing environmental and societal challenges.