Agrifood innovation hub AgSphere has entered into a formal partnership with Leuven, Belgium-based EIT Food, creating a channel for Canadian agrifood startups to access European networks, funding structures, and industry relationships.
Startup delegation to Warsaw
The two organizations will coordinate startup immersion programs, skills development, and cross-regional exchanges. As an immediate first step, AgSphere is assembling a cohort of Canadian startups to attend EIT Food’s Next Bite event in Warsaw on October 28 and 29. Applications are open until June, with selections to follow.
“We’re hitting the ground running on our partnership with EIT Food by assembling a cohort for our first startup trip this fall. The EU is not only a major market for agrifood products, it’s also home to sector innovators that we want to help startups build relationships with,” Chris Paterson, AgSphere Executive Director
Protein diversification on the agenda
EIT Food, founded in 2016 and supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, describes itself as the world’s largest food innovation community. Its work spans resilient agriculture, agrifood biotech, and protein diversification, an area of growing commercial activity across Europe that includes plant-based ingredients, precision fermentation, and novel protein development.
For early-stage Canadian companies in these categories, access to EIT Food’s network could open procurement and investment conversations that would otherwise require significant independent effort to establish.
Richard Zaltzman, CEO at EIT Food, said: “Partnerships like this are essential to delivering real change in the food system. By working together across borders with organisations like AgSphere, we are strengthening a pan-European and global innovation community that can make food more sustainable, accessible, secure and transparent for all.”
