The relevant TNO groups plan to move to Wageningen at the end of 2017 to merge with the DLO insti tute. TNO’s food and nutrition groups already work with Wageningen UR in the Food and Nutrition top institute, so their research fields complement one another, says Niek Snoeij, director of TNO’s Healthy Living theme. In the past few years they have collaborated on the development of foodstuffs with less salt and sugar, for instance, and on the production of bioethanol from waste products in the agrosector. ‘Now we want to set up large collaborative clusters,’ says Snoeij. He will be forming the management team together with Raoul Bino, the Food and Biobased Research director at Wageningen.
Snoeij believes that together, Wageningen UR and TNO will be better placed to win EU research contracts. That commercial perspective is the main reason why TNO wants to merge its food and nutrition research with Wageningen UR. Snoeij says TNO in Zeist had come to the conclusion that moving to a campus and collaborating with a university would be the best option. Then they decided on Wageningen.