Partners

Our extensive partnership with Industry, Government, Civil Society and Charity Organisations will maximise reach, impact and translation into policy, and transformation of the food system.

Established in 1956, PGRO is highly respected as a centre of excellence for applied research in grain and vegetable legumes. The organisation is significantly funded by voluntary levy from growers and is well supported by processors and the wider value chain, in furthering grower and industry knowledge for effective, efficient and sustainable crop production. PGRO is unique in Europe in the focus given to these crops, the ground up approach adopted in research and knowledge dissemination. The organisation have extensive active networks at farmer level, within the supply industry and within academic research throughout the UK and Europe.

Heygates is an integrated business with activities in farming, milling and baking. As a project partner, Heygates will play a role in Raising the Pulse project and foresees opportunities to influence UK food supply chains. Heygates expect the project to to bring more nutritionally and environmentally attractive food to UK consumers.

Pladis is one of the fastest growing global snacking companies, based in the UK and formed in 2016, with over 300 years of family baking and confectionery experience and home to much-loved brands including McVitie’s, Carr’s and Jacob’s. Core to pladis is the purpose of bringing happiness with every single bite to consumers while meeting different consumers expectations and needs, creating healthier products to offer choice to consumers as well as enhancing the nutritional value of existing products.

As leading the producers of high quality rhizobial and microbial biostimulants, Legume Technology Ltd is very pleased to be involved in Raising the Pulse project. The organisation is a UK based SME and distribute products to more than 30 countries worldwide. Legume Technology is constantly involved in R&D to ensure that they continue to provide highly effective and environmentally beneficial inoculants to improve the yield, stress resistance and nutritional value of a widening variety of crop types.

Hodmedod is a small but growing independent business established in 2012 from the realisation that fava beans were grown but little eaten in the UK, though a delicious and nutritious food that can help build healthy soils and support more resilient farming systems. Bringing the beans back into British kitchens proved the catalyst to build a network of farmers diversifying arable rotations by introducing existing, forgotten and novel pulses, grains and seeds. A proud winner of Best Food Producer in the BBC Food and Farming Awards, Hodmedod now works with over thirty different crops to produce a diverse range of over 100 plant-based wholefoods.

Agrimetrics has created the agri-food data marketplace to support a transformation of the food system over the coming decades. In particular, data will play a key role in ensuring that the health of the food consumer is understood in the context of the food production ecosystem and this project represents an implementation of the concept.

BioPower Technologies Limited (BPT) is a UK SME specialising in the micronisation of materials. BPT use their proprietary RESS technology to provide high-quality cost-effective powder materials. BPT has successfully undertaken extensive research programmes, including: IUK Citrusafe – Valorisation of citrus peel using micronisation, IUK Rapidry – Energy efficient drying of farm surplus crops for micronisation, IUK Maxfibre – Production of High Fibre bakery using side stream products. IUK Solar Saver – Low cost drying for Africa.

The John Lewis Partnership is the UK’s largest employee owned business and parent company of two cherished retail brands – John Lewis & Partners and Waitrose & Partners, which are owned in Trust by over 74,000 Partners. The food arm of the business, ‘Waitrose & Partners’ is dedicated to offering superb quality tasty food that has been responsibly sourced, combined with unrivalled high standards of customer service from their Partners. Waitrose have currently 329 stores across the UK, including convenience branches, as well as shops at Welcome Break service stations, waitrose.com and their own Waitrose & Partners farm. Waitrose also have a number of shops in the Middle East and export products to 58 countries worldwide.

The Business of Healthy, Sustainable, Delicious Food Choices’ is a ground-breaking initiative from The Culinary Institute of America and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health that works to realize a long-term, practical vision integrating optimal nutrition and public health, environmental stewardship and restoration, and social responsibility concerns within the foodservice industry and the culinary profession. The initiative’s thought-leadership including showing that changing menus is a powerful, and previously underappreciated, way to drive improvements in our health and our planet, bringing attention to protein, both animal- and plant-based, to show how that macronutrient category has the largest impact on the environment including climate change and making plant-forward dining a mainstream concept in the culinary profession and foodservice industry, with a clear vision for a new way to cook and serve food to others.

British Nutrition Foundation is a registered charity focusing on nutrition science communication. The Foundation has a strong interest in healthy, sustainable diets for all and has been involved in a number of activities in recent years to raise awareness of the need to rebalance UK diets to better reflect the predominantly plant-derived diet depicted in the government’s Eatwell Guide. Key to this has been efforts to raise awareness of the need to increase consumption of pulses across the UK population, whilst stressing opportunities for expanding supply of sustainably UK-grown pulses.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is a department of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom responsible for environmental protection, food production and standards, agriculture, fisheries and rural communities in the entire United Kingdom. Improving the productivity, sustainability and resilience of agricultural systems plays a pivotal role in delivering Defra’s core objectives to make the UK a world leading food and farming nation, as well as leaving our environment in a better state than we inherited it.