Biofach 2025: Cosun Protein unveils organic Tendra fava bean protein for sports nutrition
03 Mar 2025 | Cosun Protein
At Biofach 2025, Michiel Pronk, sales manager at Cosun Protein, discussed what sets the company’s Tendra fava bean protein isolate apart in the competitive plant-based protein market. With the launch of its organic version, Tendra offers added value for brands seeking clean-label, sustainable ingredients. Pronk explained how Cosun Protein’s proprietary extraction technology enhances the nutrition and sustainability of Tendra, while also improving the taste and texture of plant-based dairy and sports nutrition products.
Hello and welcome to Nutrition Insight's interview today.
My name is Va Patel, and I'm a senior journalist at Nutrition Insight, and I'm really happy to be talking to you today.
Can you please introduce yourself?
Thank you for this interview and likewise, of course.
My name is Mihel Pronk.
I'm with the G protein team who are responsible for the sales.
Thank you for being here.
I have some questions for you.
Firstly, I see that you are showcasing vegan protein today.
So what makes your tendra fava bean protein isolate stand out compared to other plant-based proteins on the market today?
I think what we've learned over the two years now being on the market is that there is a big difference in taste and functionality if you look at plant-based proteins, and there's exactly.
Attendra brings a lot of opportunities.
It's a neutral tasting plant-based protein isolate, but at the same time it is also offering quite some functionalities.
And how does the organic version of the tendra, and that's new, right?
How does that add value for your customers and why is it relevant for today's market?
If you look on let's say the customer base where We are talking to and also focusing on the industries we talk with a lot of healthy and nutrition players and among those there are also organic formulators.
So for us it makes sense to also come to the market with an organic one and next to that we also quickly learned that among the organic plant-based protein out there already on the market again taste is quite challenging.
I think we have a nice opportunity there for organic formulators.
And what role does tendra play in improving the taste and texture of plant-based dairy and sports nutrition products?
Like I said, at the moment you see that there is a willingness to replace plant-based animal-derived proteins, but of course, Taste is king there and I think what we see with tendra because of the extraction process we use, we get a very neutral tasting plant-based protein compared to, for example, pea or chickpea or rice protein islets.
So I think there is what tendra really can offer to create better tasting formulation also in sport nutrition products indeed where this has been very challenging up to this point.
And your proprietary extraction technology is key to tendra.
And how does it impact the nutrition and sustainability of the protein?
I think it's doing both at the same time, to be honest, with coming to the market with a neutral tasting plant-based protein, but at the same time the protein also offers functionalities like high solubility, emulsifying capabilities.
You can increase.
Higher levels of proteins or replace higher levels of animal derived proteins so at the same time you're making your products more nutritious, higher protein levels, also, for example, in old dairy formulations where at the moment plant-based formulations are very low in protein content and at the same time that contributes to the sustainability as , replacing animal derived proteins with plant-based proteins.
Me a little bit more about where the raw materials of this protein source and where it comes from, how it's grown.
Yes, good question.
Our raw materials, our fava beans are all grown in Europe, so at the moment, mainly the Netherlands and Germany, so quite local.
We are also a Dutch-based company, so that's also something that you see more and more coming from our suppliers that they prefer locally.
Sourced raw materials, so that's in our case based in Europe, very beneficial.
Thank you so much for your time today and talking about.
Thank you.
