The Société Régionale d’Investissement de Wallonie (SRIW), the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Sofiprotéol, an Avril Group financing company, are investing €10m ($11.8m) in Cosucra. The company will use this financing to strengthen its production capacity, helping to secure its position the European market.
In 2020, SRIW began efforts to obtain support from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to cope with an upsurge in its operations. In 2021, SRIW was endorsed as an EIB partner and intermediary and was granted an initial loan envelope of €100m ($118.7m) to be used to finance business projects in Wallonia, Belgium.
The other component of the financing comes from Sofiprotéol, a finance company for the French plant protein and oil sector. The investment will enable the pea protein manufacturer to improve the performance of its industrial equipment and increase its production volumes.
It’s also expected to create at least 20 jobs within three years. In line with the company’s sustainability commitments, the financing is linked to its CSR performance, based on social and environmental priorities.
Cosucra CEO Jacques Crahay said: “We are particularly pleased with the spirit in which the discussions took place, taking the interests of all parties into account. Indeed, beyond securing financial resources, we wanted to engage with our partners to share experiences and improve the business project from a sustainability perspective. This support strengthens our determination to continue our mission tirelessly, continually adapting to our two main stakeholders: farmers and the food industry.”
SRIW Vice-President Sébastien Durieux added: “SRIW has been supporting Cosucra’s projects for more than 15 years now. The company is a model of resilience and ambition. We must indeed recall the strategic shift made in the 2000s with the abandonment of sugar activities to concentrate on the extraction of ingredients first from chicory and then peas. We are pleased to be able to continue to support its teams with their development projects offering substantial possibilities in fast-growing markets. With its natural ingredients, Cosucra is particularly well positioned to meet the needs of consumers and the underlying trends in the agri-food sector — such as clean labels and plant-based products — particularly with the booming demand for alternatives to animal proteins.”