Why market data alone is not enough for your next investment
You can build strong technology and still struggle to scale, because market dynamics and policy developments move faster than your plans. During the Deep Dive session by NXTGEN Hightech Agrifood at Koppert, 36 project partners and directors placed the agrifood market assessment from late 2024 alongside current policy developments. This shifted the conversation from updates to decisions. What does this mean for your next investment, your international positioning, and the partners you need to make scaling feasible?
Three outcomes that directly impact your business case
The session resulted in three clear lines that many organisations are currently dealing with simultaneously.
Market potential is there, but your business case depends on adoption, certification and access to value chains.
Policy is increasingly determining your time to market and access to financing, calling for a stronger and more unified European framework.
Collaboration has become a strategic condition, as scaling requires coordination across the value chain to maintain international momentum.
Market expectations only become useful when assumptions are made explicit
The market assessment provided direction, but also sparked discussion about what companies actually experience in practice. Growth in hightech applications is recognised, yet customer adoption and access to value chains remain unpredictable. This clarified where the real uncertainty lies, not in the technology itself, but in the assumptions around validation, certification and commercial scaling that are included in your plans, but not yet collectively supported.
Policy is no longer context, but a factor in your planning
The discussion on industrial policy focused less on general ambitions and more on how it translates into execution. European decisions on regulation, sustainability, energy and trade directly affect risks in timing, costs and investability. At the same time, pace and interpretation vary across countries. This is exactly why the need for a stronger and more unified European framework became so explicit, as fragmentation leads to investments that are difficult to scale internationally.
Scaling requires value chain organisation, not just a strong consortium on paper
The visit to Koppert made clear what scaling actually means when operating globally. It is not only about R&D, but also about production, validation, distribution and long-term relationships with growers and value chain partners. This brought consortium building back as a practical question, who organises the steps that no single party can efficiently carry, and how do you prevent international players from moving faster and securing market access.
Progress starts where reflection is translated into organisation
A key outcome is the formation of a core group that will develop a concrete next step towards NXTGEN Agrifood 2.0, a next phase in which partners work towards shared decisions and execution. The Deep Dive session at Koppert showed above all that this only works when market, policy and practice remain part of the same conversation, allowing assumptions to be sharpened faster and collaboration to become concrete sooner. The Handsfree Agrifood ecosystem supports this process by bringing perspectives together and enabling new combinations, especially where individual plans start to intersect.