Niek Snoeij, who as Healthy Life director is responsible for nutrition research at TNO, would have preferred to continue to collaborate with WUR as a separate organization. ‘Collaboration was going well; we have joint projects in the fields of nutrition and biobased products.’ But he does understand the wish to concentrate too. ‘When government funding is cut back it is wise to join forces. The nutrition industry supports this concentration of research too.’
Effectively, this is a question of transferring 45 staff positions from TNO’s Functional Ingredients research group in Zeist to Wageningen. These researchers bring with them TNO’s analysing equipment and research funding from the ministry of EZ.
Minister Kamp announced the transfer of TNO’s nutrition research to Wageningen on 30 September. ‘Wageningen research has a strong position as a research organization for agriculture, biobased, nature, and nutrition and health,’ writes Kamp. ‘By shifting TNO’s expertise on nutrition to Wageningen we get a single Dutch research centre for food innovation. This ‘Dutch Food Initiative’ is going to play a strong leading role in applied research on nutrition & health.’
TNO is shedding its nutrition research and concentrating on health research, says Snoeij. The office in Zeist will close mid-2018 and the TNO health researchers will move to Leiden. Snoeij hopes the former TNO researchers in Wageningen will continue to work with TNO.