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Beneo has announced it is taking a 14% stake in Grillido, to better understand consumer preferences for plant-based meat solutions. Grillido, the Munich-based hybrid-product start-up, focuses on the development, production, marketing and distribution of meat replacement and meat alternative products, as well as other meat-based products. The start-up's ecommerce platform, which provides consumer insights from multi-channel sales, will give Beneo faster and direct access to consumer feedback, enabling the ingredient giant to gain information about consumers’ plant-based preferences and needs. This will facilitate Beneo in the faster development of its existing product solutions for the plant-based market, as well as new products and innovations. Dominic Speleers, member of the executive board at Beneo, said: “Moving closer to the consumer and having faster and direct feedback from the market on our solutions and products is a crucial advantage for Beneo as a B2B company. This way, we can further improve our solutions for the plant-based meat alternative market and make an important step forward in our plant-based protein roadmap.” Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.