One of the most interesting outcomes of OnFoods concerns the way the project approached the issue of technology transfer. Rather than treating it as a final stage of research, it was conceived as an integrated dimension embedded in the partnership’s design from the very beginning. From its inception, OnFoods sought to transform a large PNRR programme into an ecosystem capable of continuously engaging the food industry, moving beyond the traditional model of occasional collaboration between universities and companies.

For many companies, participating in OnFoods represented a significant step in their innovation paths: an opportunity to access advanced scientific expertise, engage with highly specialized research groups, and work within an open innovation environment addressing some of the main challenges facing the food system.

Through a progressive and flexible model of collaboration, the project gradually built a genuine pathway “from research to industry”, involving more than 150 companies across the entire food value chain. This made it possible to co-design solutions, test them in real production contexts, and develop technologies and products with concrete prospects for industrial application.

The point is not only about numbers. Perhaps the most significant aspect has been making the transition from scientific knowledge to industrial experimentation more natural and frequent, creating favourable conditions for the development and engineering of new solutions in the food sector.

The companies involved fall into three main categories.

The first group consists of the partner companies of the OnFoods Foundation, involved from the outset of the project, participating in its scientific governance and benefiting from a share of the ministerial funding. This group includes several major actors in the sector that contributed to shaping the partnership’s application trajectories: Barilla, Bolton Food, De’ Longhi Appliances, Sacco System, Cirfood and Tecnoalimenti.

Within the project hub, an important role was also played by the Italian Confederation of Cooperatives (Confcooperative), which facilitated dialogue with hundreds of companies in the agri-food value chain, particularly through its sector federation Fedagripesca.

A second mode of collaboration concerns companies that participated in the projects of the various spokes without receiving direct funding, but by providing expertise, pilot plants, use cases and real production contexts. In this “frontier zone”, involving a network of more than 150 companies, OnFoods experimented with some of the most interesting forms of collaboration between research and industry.

It is in this space that many technologies and approaches developed in laboratories were able to be tested within real production chains. At the same time, a continuous exchange of knowledge developed between companies and researchers, particularly involving PhD candidates and early-career researchers who had the opportunity to engage with real design and engineering challenges.

The third type of companies involved consists of those that participated in projects funded through the Cascade Calls (Bandi a Cascata), a mechanism designed to open the partnership to new public–private collaborations, with a strong presence of small and medium-sized enterprises and a clear orientation toward technology transfer.

• See all the cascade call projects

Through these calls, nearly €20 million were allocated to research and innovation activities, about €12 million of which went to private entities under a co-financing scheme with public funding. Of the 141 total beneficiaries, around 60% belong to the business sector, with a significant presence of SMEs. A particularly relevant element concerns the territorial distribution: the largest share of Cascade Calls funding was directed to Southern Italy.

Overall, this set of collaborations helped build a genuine innovation pipeline. The direct involvement of companies made it possible to develop and test numerous biotechnologies and new products, some of which — seven as of early 2026 — have reached technological maturity levels between TRL 6 and TRL 8, therefore close to demonstration in operational environments and nearer to market entry.

Many of the research activities addressed scientifically complex technologies, often still in exploratory stages. Even when initial technological maturity levels were low, these activities contributed to building the foundations for future innovations, particularly in the areas of sustainable production processes, energy efficiency and the reduction of waste along food supply chains.

A further development of this strategy was the creation of ReRITT — the Italian Network for Agri-Food Research for the Competitiveness and Sustainability of Enterprises and Supply Chains — promoted by the OnFoods Foundation together with the National Agrifood Cluster CL.A.N. and other actors involved in research and technology transfer in the agrifood sector.

The objective of the network is to strengthen the connection between research and industry by creating a platform capable of facilitating the transfer of innovation and technologies aimed at improving the sustainability and competitiveness of the agri-food sector.

Taken as a whole, the experience of OnFoods shows how large-scale research programmes can also become spaces of concrete collaboration between science and industry: environments where knowledge circulates, solutions are tested, and relationships are built that will continue to produce effects even beyond the duration of the project.