Instead of importing ingredients grown in the tropics, the Netherlands could start growing its own spices, flavors and aromas in greenhouses. To this end, ingredient supplier Intertaste is looking for business partners to start an Ingredient Farm.
The projected location for the farm is the Next Garden greenhouse area in Lingewaard, a horticultural area near the German border. Intertaste wants the Ingredient Farm to become a communication and inspiration hub for all involved.
Intertaste is looking to connect with other ingredients suppliers, food manufacturers, extraction technology experts and greenhouse growers in order to start new supply chains. The company wants to develop new greenhouse growing systems to grow plants that produce expensive, high-quality food ingredients, such as vanilla orchids, Wasabi plants and pepper plants. It also wants to optimize post-harvest processing. Wageningen UR Greenhouse Horticulture and Eastern Netherlands Development Agency Oost NV have agreed to support Intertaste’s ambitions.
Companies active in the herbs and spices sector and in phytopharmaceuticals depend to a great extent on imports from tropical areas in Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. They need to reduce this dependence to become less vulnerable to issues plaguing the worldwide ingredient supply chain. These issues include food safety (pesticide residues), CSR (child labor), product quality, contaminations, incorporation of exogenous plants, rising price levels, harvesting in the ‘wild’ and certification issues. In addition, ingredient suppliers are looking for new, natural flavors to expand the product range they can offer to small and large food manufacturers as innovations.
Seeking partners Intertaste sees the Ingredient Farm as a way to bring together parties from the entire supply chain to start a new ingredient supply chain that originates in the Netherlands. This could reduce dependence on production areas elsewhere in the world. The Ingredient Farm is not just about developing new technologies, but also about developing new varieties and better cultivars to create new flavors and extract more valuable compounds.
The proposed location for the Ingredient Farm in Lingewaard is just a stone’s throw from several knowledge institutions, including Wageningen University, Radboud University Nijmegen and several universities of applied sciences (HAN, Van Hall Larenstein and HAS Hogeschool). Next Garden is situated in the horticultural hub in the Dutch province of Gelderland, making it easy to include other types of products (such as fruits, trees and mushrooms) and to use existing greenhouses.
