Royal Cosun is an agri-industrial cooperative firmly rooted in the primary sector. It was established more than a 115 years ago by Dutch sugar beet growers who united themselves in a cooperative. Today, the cooperative has some 9,000 member/shareholders and has grown into a business with 3,900 employees and a group turnover of about €1.9 billion annually. 

The businesses that belong to Cosun are Aviko, Duynie, Sensus, Suiker Unie, SVZ and Cosun Biobased Products. They produce food ingredients and products that make their way to the food industry, foodservice sector and retail channels. In addition, the group is increasingly focusing on components for non-food applications. 

Cosun’s ambition is to make optimal use of all its vegetable raw materials. It has traditionally concentrated on foodstuffs as primary, high value applications. Virtually all our businesses also supply ingredients or residual flows that are used in animal feed or non-food applications. These flows include natural food fibres, starch applications, natural aromas, colourings and flavourings, recoverable minerals and fertilisers. Once all the usable substances have been recovered, the residues are increasingly being fermented to produce 'green' energy. 

Royal Cosun is a strong believer in the bio-based economy and this is driving the development of biobased solutions also at the other business groups of Cosun. Currently available to the market place are bio-methane, bio-ethanol, starch derivatives, fermentable sugars and horticulture solutions. 

Royal Cosun has the lead in the BBI JU PULP2VALUE project www.pulp2value.eu that aims to demonstrate an integrated and cost-effective cascading biorefinery system to refine sugar beet pulp and isolate high value components.