Espoo – September 17, 2026 -- VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and seven food industry partners have concluded a three-year, €3 million project concluding that profitable plant-based ingredient production depends on converting every raw-material fraction into value, not just isolating protein.
The RETHINK project, funded by Business Finland and running from June 2023 to August 2026, examined how Finland's oat and faba bean supply chains could be restructured into investable ingredient businesses. Industrial partners included Anora, Apetit, Fazer, Helsingin Mylly, Raisio, Valio and Viking Malt.
Carbohydrate side-streams, not just protein, hold the profit margin
Current business models extracting plant protein for meat substitutes typically discard carbohydrate-rich fractions as low-value animal feed, according to Emilia Nordlund, VTT's responsible project leader. Since carbohydrates often make up the largest share of raw material volume, RETHINK researchers identified higher-value applications outside food, including cosmetics, as necessary to make production economically viable.
Valio and Viking Malt jointly commercialize a germinated faba bean protein granule
The two companies combined Viking Malt's germination expertise with Valio's commercialization capability to create a new ingredient targeting the plant-based and hybrid meat product market. Susanna Kallio, Vice President of Plant-Based Business at Valio, and Xin Huang, Group R&D Manager at Viking Malt, described the collaboration as built on maximizing the value of Finnish raw materials through shared domestic expertise.
VTT patents a new method to concentrate oat beta-glucan fiber
VTT researchers secured a patent for a process that concentrates and applies oat dietary fiber, beta-glucan, allowing it to be added to liquid products while keeping the fiber intact and the liquid pourable rather than paste-like. A separate pretreatment technique developed under the project addresses off-flavors typical of legume-based ingredients, widening potential food applications for legume proteins.
Spin-off Happy Plant Protein moves single-step separation technology into industrial use in Latvia and the Netherlands
Research under RETHINK advanced technology commercialized by VTT spin-off Happy Plant Protein from development stage to commercial readiness. The process separates protein from carbohydrates and texturizes the protein in a single processing step, and is now deployed in industrial production projects in both Latvia and the Netherlands.
Nordlund noted that closer collaboration among farmers, ingredient producers, food companies, investors and regulators is required to reduce supply risk and enable production to scale, arguing that investment-ready models must plan raw material availability, processing and commercial routes as a unified system.