Plant Protein Platform LTH – Creating access to knowledge and infrastructure to help catalyse the Protein Shift towards a more sustainable food system

Located at Lund University, the Plant Protein Platform - LTH works with developing novel processes, technical solutions on the mini-pilot scale, and attractive plant-based products.
Through excellent research and collaboration we aim to:
- Create alternative utilisations of existing and emerging crops as food raw materials.
- Develop novel processes for attractive plant-based protein products.
- Enable the recovery of protein from existing plant-based by-product streams
Our mission is to help catalyse the Protein Shift to a more sustainable food system.
The project’s objectives are:
- To create a forum for learning and collaboration by offering a series of four 2-day practical courses intended for both industry and PhD students.
- To increase the utilisation of our existing infrastructure by developing a framework for industrial partners and visiting researchers to gain access to our pilot hall and expertise.
- To develop a national sustainable food processing network.
Expected results and benefits of providing relevant education, and access to our 400m pilot hall
include:
- De-risking of innovation by increasing the knowledge base of companies, and to maximise the utilisation of research results in their own activities.
- Enabling a proof of concept scale-up from lab to industrially relevant processes, in small volumes with reduced waste and cost.
Justification: Funding is applied for the additional costs associated with making our infrastructure
accessible and organisation of industrial courses.

The world population is growing and with a middle class of 3 billion people projected for 2050, it is not sustainable to continue eating animal-based food to the extent we do today. We are facing a protein shift in which part of the animal based protein in the food needs to be replaced with plant proteins. The Swedish agricultural sector and food industry have a great opportunity to help facilitate this shift, by developing a new plant based food products. However, before a new product which has been developed in the lab can be commercialised, its production process must be scaled up in several steps.
The Plant Protein Platform- LTH works with the scale up process of the production of new plant based food products from the lab to the first pilot tests. This step is critical as it show if the product can be produced using the processes used on an industrial level. The Plant Protein Platform- LTH increases the chances for success for this first critical step, by having an extensive equipment baseto work with, and a wide array of expertise collected into one place. The proposed project will enable industries and more researchers to access and utilise the Plant Protein Platform- LTH. Furthermore, a series of courses will be held for industry and PhD students to spread the knowledge about practical food processing and to create and interactive environment between industry and academia.