Europe generates millions of tons of co-products every year from the food, beverage and biofuel industries. Yet despite their nutritional and functional value, these resources often receive far less attention than the primary products they accompany.

As Jonathan Job, CEO of Duynie, puts it: “There are 25 to 40 million tons of co-products generated in Europe every year. It is almost criminal that we do not pay more attention to where that resource goes."

For nearly 60 years, Duynie has been focused on answering that question. What began as a business dedicated to finding destinations for co-products from food manufacturers has evolved into a company that sits at the center of Europe's circular food ecosystem, creating value from materials that others may overlook.

Today, Duynie is not only creating new value streams for agricultural co-products but also helping optimize entire agri-food systems.

Duynie was founded on a practical challenge. Food producers generated co-products that needed a reliable outlet, and livestock farming provided an effective solution. For decades, the company collected co-products from a wide range of industries and supplied them to local cattle and pig farmers. Through managing residual streams, building relationships with producers and customers, and operating across complex supply chains, Duynie developed a deep understanding of how value can be created from co-products.

Around the turn of the century, the company began asking a different question: what if co-products were viewed not simply as secondary outputs, but as valuable raw materials in their own right?

That shift fundamentally reshaped Duynie’s future.

“We are no longer only a trader supplying feed markets. We are also an ingredient company. If you zoom out and look at the broader picture, I see us as a system optimization business.”

The company connects suppliers, producers, transport partners, customers, and technology capabilities to find the highest-value destination for every co-product stream. In many ways, Duynie was practising circularity long before the concept became mainstream.

One of the clearest examples of Duynie’s approach is DuyGrain®.

Developed from brewer’s spent grain, protein and fiber rich product DuyGrain® demonstrates how co-products can be transformed into valuable food ingredients while supporting both sustainability and commercial performance. Products like DuyGrain® are important because they prove that circular ingredients can move beyond concept and deliver real value in the marketplace. However, successfully introducing co-product-based ingredients requires solving a fundamental challenge: consistency.

Co-products naturally vary due to differences in production processes, raw materials, and seasonal conditions, while food manufacturers require consistent performance in every batch. According to Jonathan, Duynie has developed the expertise needed to transform this natural variability into reliable and dependable ingredients. Achieving this goes beyond technical knowledge alone. It involves working closely with customers through education, testing, and validation,  helping them gain confidence that sustainable ingredients can consistently deliver the performance required in their applications.

Duynie’s expertise has bridged this gap, combining decades of operational knowledge and processing capabilities to convert variable co-product streams into high-quality ingredients that food manufacturers can trust.

Encouragingly, DuyGrain® is showing that circular ingredients can deliver both environmental and business benefits. Jonathan points to baking applications as an example. During trials, Duynie discovered that DuyGrain® improved seed adhesion on bread, reducing seed losses and helping bakeries lower ingredient costs.

“We are able to show food manufacturers that our products can measurably improve sustainability while also reducing ingredient costs.”

For food manufacturers, that combination represents a powerful value proposition.

Alongside market development and innovation, Jonathan acknowledges that policy and reporting frameworks influence the pace at which circular solutions are adopted. Today's sustainability frameworks are highly focused on measuring direct emissions, while the broader value created through co-product valorization is often less visible.

"At the moment, companies are measured by what they emit. They are not measured by what they enable others to avoid."

His observation points to a broader challenge facing the circular economy. While companies are increasingly encouraged to reduce their environmental footprint, existing reporting mechanisms do not always fully capture the positive impact created when co-products replace raw materials, improve resource efficiency, enhance resource security or enable lower-carbon value chains.

As circular business models continue to mature, creating frameworks that better capture these system-wide benefits could help accelerate investment, strengthen business cases for innovation, and encourage greater collaboration. Policy may not only be a compliance driver, but also an important enabler of scaling circular solutions.

The future of co-product valorization is about far more than sustainability. It is increasingly about resource security, resilience, and making better use of what is already available within local and regional food systems.

As climate pressures, geopolitical uncertainty, and resource constraints continue to grow, Jonathan believes maximizing the value of every resource is becoming a necessity rather than a choice.

“Whatever comes out of the ground must be utilized to its fullest extent.”

Looking ahead, he envisions a future in which co-product valorization is fully embedded within mainstream food and feed systems. This will require collaboration across the value chain, bringing together food producers, processors, ingredient manufacturers, researchers, retailers, and innovators around a shared goal: creating more value from existing resources.

With decades of expertise, a Europe-wide network, and proven solutions such as DuyGrain®, Duynie is helping build the foundation for a more circular and resilient agrifood system. The opportunity now is for forward-thinking companies to collaborate across the value chain, combining market insight, technical expertise, and innovation to create new sources of value from existing resources.

Those who take that step today will not merely adapt to the future of food, they will help define it.


Duynie is a partner of Holland Circular Hotspot. This article was written by Holland Circular Hotspot as part of this partnership.

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