Asia’s largest dairy company Yili is reaching out to European research institutes to scale up health ecosystems in the region. Yili will enhance its collaborations across Europe to work on the challenges faced in the food and agricultural sectors to deliver healthy solutions to consumers.

Yili is partnering with the agri-food tech accelerator StartLife in the Netherlands and also joining the Open Innovation Forum, an industry network for food and FMCG companies at the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), which is part of the University of Cambridge, UK. 

Exchanging new ideas
Together with entrepreneurs, Yili will brainstorm and facilitate the exchange of new ideas across the industry. 

Yili Innovation Center Europe and StartLife are both based on the campus of Wageningen University & Research at the heart of Food Valley in the Netherlands.

By becoming a member of the IfM’s Open Innovation Forum, Yili has an opportunity to collaborate with industry experts and academics, gaining access to the latest industry insights, tools and techniques. 

IfM’s Open Innovation Forum also provides a platform for collaboration opportunities among companies at a full range of activities in the food, beverage and FMCG value chains. 

The Forum helps members combine their internal thinking with external insights, ideas, and paths to market and strengthens Yili’s membership in the Corporate Venturing Leadership Forum originating from the Cambridge ecosystem.

Overcoming future challenges
Through these collaborations, Yili gains access to a very large ecosystem of agricultural and healthy food start-ups to help overcome future challenges faced by the industry, including challenges emerging in the next decade., like how to feed the world’s ballooning population and creating sustainable proteins. 

This will result in “new win-win collaborations,” such as proof of concept projects to deliver holistic solutions. Yili will be a catalyst in enabling start-ups to access the fast-growing healthy food market in China and the rest of Asia.

IfM Engage partners with organizations across industry, government and academia to support them in solving complex challenges, using approaches and knowledge developed at the IfM, a division of the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. 

StartLife’s mission is to support founders in accelerating their agrifood tech start-ups that help shape a sustainable food system.