How Team Work Turns Faba Beans Into Sustainable Innovation

Join us in celebrating twelve months of local sourcing, state-of-the-art processing technology, and a team that brought BENEO faba bean protein to life – despite all challenges.

In April 2025, we celebrated the inauguration of our brand-new pulse-processing plant in Offstein Germany – the result of a 50 million euro investment made by BENEO’s mother company Südzucker Group. This signaled a clear commitment to becoming a key player on the plant-based protein market. A lot has happened since then. To celebrate the milestones and challenges of the first year of producing BENEO’s faba bean protein ingredients for food and feed applications, we spoke to the local team. Keep reading for exciting insights and inspiring examples of teamwork and dedication.

Why faba beans: How it all began

With plant-based, plant-forward or flexitarian diets not only being recommended by national authorities for health and environmental reasons but also being sought after by an increasing number of consumers across the globe, food and drink manufacturers need ingredients that help them create appealing products. To cater to this demand with a local protein source, BENEO decided to expand its functional ingredient portfolio with protein-rich ingredients made from faba beans. Why? As pulses, faba beans are naturally high in protein. As a plus, they can fix nitrogen from the air to supply themselves and subsequent plants, reducing fertilizer input, enhancing soil quality and increasing biodiversity. At the same time, strong nutritional and functional benefits make them suitable for a range of food and drink products.

After a transition period during which BENEO produced faba bean ingredients with the help of a partner, April 2025 marked a significant milestone: After a construction period of just one and a half years, BENEO inaugurated its state-of-the-art pulse processing plant in Offstein, in the South-West of Germany. Here, a team of around 20 highly motivated employees has worked tirelessly to ensure a reliable, high-quality supply of faba bean protein concentrate and starch-rich flour. All under the guiding principle of sustainability.

Opening and running a completely new factory was a complex project, as Maximilian Krantz, Plant Manager, explains: “What strikes me most is that everyone involved was very optimistic. Despite the fact that a new facility, a new process, and a new business area with new colleagues brought with them an incredible level of complexity.”

So how did the team manage to tackle this complexity and ensure BENEO’s customers receive the quality they expect from us? Well, it’s clearly the people behind. So let’s hear from them.

Everything Starts on the Field

Let’s begin at the source of the value chain: the fields. Faba beans were a new crop for the German farmers that BENEO and Südzucker Group work with. Till Georg Wenz, Coordinator Faba Bean, explains why the collaboration was smooth from the beginning: “Within the Südzucker Group, we have a very close bond and good communication with the farmers. Whenever they have questions, our own agronomy specialists or our local consultants try to come around for a visit. We also organize field days to inform the farmers about news and provide on-site consultation about the cultivation of faba beans.”

The positive response from farmers to growing faba beans on their fields was not only based on a good relationship though. “These pulses allow the farmers to enlarge their crop rotation. This is not only good for the soil and for weed management. The faba bean plant that blooms around May also provides shelter and food to a lot of beneficial insects like lady bugs, bees and bumblebees,” explains Till.

Selecting the Right Faba Bean Varieties

BENEO only sources faba beans from varieties with certain quality standards. For instance, we ensure that the farmers only grow and deliver faba beans with low contents of the antinutritional factors vicine and convicine by distributing the right seeds to them.

In addition, BENEO’s faba beans are REDCert² certified, which is equivalent to the Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) from the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) at the highest “Gold” level.

Looking back at the first year of faba bean processing, Till underlines the unpredictability of crop cultivation: “There are surprises every year in the cultivation of faba beans as they react to certain weather conditions. For instance, hot and dry days during flowering in May of 2025 reduced the flowers and pods per plant which led to a lower yield compared to the previous year.” That’s why working closely with farmers is and will continue to be key to ensuring reliable supply.

Building Up the Plant: From Idea to Operation

Now let’s step from the field inside the production plant. Plant Manager Max summarizes: “The team was set up almost from scratch. This meant that structure and experience with the process as well as familiarity with the Südzucker Group had to be strengthened. That’s why I am very proud of the whole team for how everyone dealt with all the new impressions.”

Quality First: Ensuring Excellence From Bean to Ingredient

Talking about being new – faba beans were a new raw material in BENEO’s portfolio. Christoph Hoffmann, Quality Assurance Manager Functional Proteins, explains the implications: “This meant establishing quality and safety standards for food and feed from scratch. Using experience gained from trial productions with our partner, we developed specifications, supplier requirements, microbiological monitoring, and process validation concepts.” Looking at what remains challenging, we jump back to the field: “A key challenge was and still is managing natural variability in an agricultural raw material while still ensuring consistent quality that meets customer and regulatory expectations”, Christoph adds.

Key quality aspects in the processing of faba beans are:

• Raw material quality, including clear criteria for impurities, contaminants, and microbiology
• Food safety risks, such as allergens, microbiological hazards, and foreign bodies
• Process control, to ensure reproducibility, traceability, and product consistency
• Since faba bean ingredients are used in bakery and meat replacement applications for example, even small deviations in color, taste, or functionality are immediately noticeable.

Turning Quality Standards into Daily Practice

Keeping all those aspects top of mind from the very beginning is key. “In the quality department, we don’t rely on “it will probably work” – instead we validate, double check, monitor, and sometimes even overthink possible issues upfront, so customers can rely on a consistent quality. Behind every smooth batch is a lot of controlled complexity”, Christoph highlights.

Did all the hard work finally pay off? It sure did: “Successfully releasing the first batches under full food grade quality standards was a defining milestone. Seeing the entire system work from raw material intake to final release, confirmed that the preparation and verification efforts had paid off”, Christoph remembers.

His personal highlight was also the close collaboration across so many departments within BENEO and the Südzucker Group, which was essential for making progress. Teamwork strikes again! This also didn’t go unnoticed by Plant Manager Max: “Team work was the way to success. Flat hierarchies, empowered people and good manners. That’s why we try to maintain the spirit of the small team we started out with, even though we’ve grown since then.”

Next up: Operations

Okay, quality procedures were in place now – how did the actual start of the production go? “One of the biggest challenges was ensuring a stable and consistent operation right from the start”, explains Fabio Eisel, Technical & Maintenance Coordinator at the BENEO production plant. “Coordinating all process steps, fine-tuning the equipment, and dealing with unexpected interactions between different systems required a lot of troubleshooting and teamwork.” But improvement was on its way: “Even relatively small changes, for example in material handling or coordination between machines, led to a noticeable increase in reliability.” Ensuring that all the interconnected systems and programs communicate seamlessly so that production runs smoothly, was one of the main challenges solved by the team on the production floor, agrees Michael Falter, Production Shift Supervisor in the new plant.

Apart from ensuring that the plant was running smoothly, its construction and commissioning provided personal learning opportunities: “This whole experience offered me valuable insights into plant setup, system integration, and the challenges that come with bringing a new facility into operation. It also helped me further develop my ability to quickly analyze issues and find practical solutions”, describes Fabio.

Where it Ends: How BENEO’s Faba Bean Protein Supports Food Innovation

Thanks to all the great team work, we have been successfully supplying our customers with its protein-rich faba bean ingredients for over a year now. What makes the production process special for Product Manager Functional Proteins, Fréderic Fernandes is that it requires no water, and runs on electricity from renewable energy sources. Also, the dry fractionation process results in a protein concentrate. “Compared to protein isolates, concentrates retain more of the plant’s natural nutritional ingredients such as fibre, starches and micronutrients. As a result, they can deliver better functionality than isolates in certain applications where texture and binding are crucial”, explains Fréderic. Another key advantage of BENEO’s production: the close proximity to the faba bean fields and farmers, leading to shorter transportation ways from field to production site.

Since the start of the local production, several successful customer projects were completed. Some examples:

• High protein baking: Faba bean protein concentrate enables protein enrichment while being a cost-effective solution.
• Egg replacement in bakery: The concentrate can fully and partially replace eggs due to good emulsification properties – also offering cost saving potential for manufacturers as well as reliable sourcing.
• Dairy (cheeses and creams): Due to the nice creaminess and texture that a concentrate can bring thanks to its natural components like fibre and starches

For Healthier Diets and a Healthier Planet

One Year, Many Voices

When being asked, which word best describes the first year of the plant, a clear picture emerges: one of challenges, commitment and shared success.

• Maximilian Krantz: “Exciting” – this refers to both pleasant experiences but also uncertainty.
• Christoph Hoffmann: “Foundational” – because this first year was about turning plans into reality and building a reliable, well‑controlled production and quality system that will support BENEO and our customers in the long term.
• Fabio Eisel: “Challenging” – because we faced many new situations, but each challenge helped us learn, improve, and grow as a team.
• Till Wenz: “Improvement”. A lot of challenges occurred and problems were faced. But for all of them a good solution was found.
• Michael Falter: “Challenging”!
• Fréderic Fernandes: “Dynamic”: it was a year full of challenges , adaptations and improvements. The team proved to be flexible and innovative in handling all obstacles.

We were also curious about the most memorable moments and stories from year one.

• Maximilian Krantz: We organized a barbecue with our families and started a tradition we want to maintain.
• Christoph Hoffmann: Achieving the FSSC certification is definitely the moment I’ll remember most. As we faced challenges and drawbacks, finally achieving the certification was particularly rewarding.
• Fabio Eisel: One moment I’ll definitely remember is the early commissioning phase, when we had to work under time pressure. Even though it was challenging, I really appreciated the strong team spirit – those situations brought us closer together and made us grow as a team.
• Till Wenz: I always enjoyed standing in a field of good, developed faba bean crops and talking to the farmers.
• Michael Falter: When our mill, for whose commissioning I was responsible, went into operation for the first time and we separated protein and starch for the first time. That will probably stay with me for a long time.
• Fréderic Fernandes: Of course, this must be the first full truck delivery out of our factory. This proved a big milestone for the operational and commercial team alike.

Lastly, let’s take a joint look into the future.

When thinking about this new year of faba bean processing, what is the team most excited about?

• Maximilian Krantz: What I’m looking forward to most is seeing the fruits of our hard work. Establishing a routine is our target for year two. And of course we want to further develop this new business!
• Christoph Hoffmann: Stabilizing and optimizing what we have built so far, with a stronger focus on continuous improvement, efficiency, and further strengthening customer confidence.
• Fabio Eisel: I’m most excited about making the production even more efficient and taking our processes to the next level. With the experience we’ve gained in the first year, we now have a strong foundation for further optimization.
• Michael Falter: Continuous improvement to expand our performance.
• Till Wenz: The most exciting time for the raw material department is the harvest at the end of June. We find out if our consulting was good and if the weather conditions during the growing period were favorable for a good yield.
• Fréderic Fernandes: The continued evolution of the plant-based protein market demonstrates that, despite a temporary slowdown, the underlying plant-forward trend has remained resilient. Innovation is accelerating across the value chain, and I am excited to keep supporting our customers with the versatility, cost-effectiveness and sustainability credentials of our faba bean portfolio.

Time to say thank you

Let’s take a moment to celebrate the achievements of the team – which is of course much bigger than the colleagues quoted in this article. But a special thank you to those who took the time to grant us these exclusive insights into what it actually means to start a new business unit and production. Thanks for this testament to team work, dedication and perseverance. A great example of what the BENEO family is capable of!

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