Up to €40,000 per project available for startups and SMEs developing sustainable food solutions
About Excel4Pro
transform the agri-food sector through cross-border collaboration and scientific excellence across Türkiye, Greece and Ukraine. By strategically leveraging the region’s scale and geographic advantage in protein-rich crop production and processing, Excel4Pro will create a single, interconnected Excellence Hub. This cross-border ecosystem fosters innovation, strengthens the plant-based protein value chain and delivers sustainable food solutions. Additionally, Excel4Pro enhances research, knowledge exchange and innovative R&I strategies, aiming to bridge knowledge gaps, attract investments, and upskill researchers and entrepreneurs.
Excel4Pro is driven by a well-balanced, multidisciplinary consortium of 17 partners from four countries (Türkiye, Greece, Ukraine and Belgium) and is coordinated by the TUBITAK’s Marmara Research Center. Built on the quadruple helix model (linking academia, the public sector, business, NGOs and SMEs) the consortium combines all the skills and resources needed for successful implementation.
Excel4Pro’s Open Call
Excel4Pro has officially launched its Open Call for innovative solutions. With a total budget of €360,000, the Open Call will financially support at least nine startups and SMEs, each eligible for funding of up to €40,000. The call is open to startups and SMEs established in Türkiye, Greece and Ukraine that are developing or ready to develop innovative plant-based protein products or sustainable food processing solutions. Selected projects will have the opportunity to design, develop, and validate their solutions within the Excel4Pro framework, contributing directly to the project’s excellence hubs and long-term innovation ecosystem.
Open Call’s Focus Areas
Through this Open Call, Excel4Pro will address a broad range of industry challenges by supporting short, focused case studies with clear business and innovation potential. Funded projects are expected to contribute to at least one of the following:
- Protein Structure-Function Relationships: Targeting next-generation plant proteins with enhanced functional properties.
- Nutritional Quality: Optimising plant proteins for performance within food matrices (flavour, texture, nutritional value).
- Process Design: Implementing sustainable processing technologies (e.g., circular economy, energy-efficient methods)
Structured implementation approach
Selected projects will be implemented over three consecutive phases:
- Phase 1 – Design (November 2026 – February 2027): Development of an activity plan
- Phase 2 – Development (March 2027 – July 2027): Implementation and reporting of results and outcomes
- Phase 3 – Validation (August 2027 – January 2028): Final reporting and/or community-associated validation activities
How to apply
Proposals must be submitted digitally via the opencalls.fund platform. Applications will be accepted by the deadline on April 27, 2026, at 17:00 CET (Brussels time). By submitting a proposal, applicants automatically agree to the terms and conditions outlined in the official Open Call Kit.
PRESS CONTACT AND SOCIAL MEDIA
White Research | Dissemination Managers
Anastasios Galatsopoulos: agalatsopoulos@white-research.eu
Artem Excel4Pro is an EU-funded project with a four-year duration that started on January 2025 and aims to is Grigoriadou: agrigoriadou@white-research.eu
