Innovation is of major importance to AVEBE. Both the company and our stakeholders want to ensure that we can compete with other starch producers. And our position in international markets depends on the competitive advantage of our crops and starch products.

The use of biotechnology offers new possibilities for the development of crops with better composition or starch content. This results in the creation of more sustainable products with a higher added value than competitors’ starch products, and in productive and high-quality agriculture. We focus our research and development (R&D) on enabling the necessary innovation, especially in terms of the composition and content of starch crops. To this end, the R&D department works along two different lines:

• Classical improvement of potatoes
• Biotechnological improvement of potatoes

Biotechnology’s potential is proving to be diverse: improved product quality, better commercial applications and considerably lower environmental impact in Agriculture and starch processing thanks to reduced use of chemical reagents and energy. Sustainability is an important force behind our use of biotechnology. This technology offers us the opportunity to replace synthetics with renewable products and thereby close the carbon cycles and diminish the greenhouse effect and global warming and to diminish chemicals inputs in agriculture.

As a consequence of the use of biotechnology, our R&D department has to perform trials with GM-crops. For all field trials and future applications with GM-crops, we ensure they are safe for mankind, animals and the environment. We operate in a responsible and careful manner, and products and processes must comply with existing local legislation and regulations. We have formulated a set of criteria for our GMO-policy.

• AVEBE will only use scientifically approved methods which are legally authorised and which are safe for public health and the environment.
• AVEBE will not use animal or human genes to enhance GMO-crops. Therefore the company will not start R&D projects involving these genes.
• The use of herbicide markers is not a goal as such in the development of new GM-crops. The markers are just a tool for AVEBE’s R&D to differentiate between non-GMO and GMO-plants. AVEBE prefers not to use these markers in commercially grown GMO-potatoes or GMO-cassava. (The company has patented a marker-free GMO-technology.)

The introduction of GMOs has to comply with local laws and local rules as well as with our criteria. In the Netherlands, for instance, we have chosen to develop only non-food and non-feed applications. On a global level, AVEBE remains firmly committed to producing fully certified non-GMO potato starch products for food applications. In general, AVEBE’s research aims to improve starch-based and “high added value” protein products. During the early stages of a project we will focus on different techniques, crops, applications and markets. Only after a research project has been successfully completed will we decide which products and markets the starch will be used in. These decisions will be based on a thorough analysis of the business opportunities. The crucial factor in these decisions will be societal acceptance of these products.

AVEBE takes social views on biotechnology seriously and regards open communication as an essential element in the use of biotechnology. In this context AVEBE will organise dialogues with stakeholders.