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FoodBev Media caught up with Gerrit Smit, managing director of the Yili Innovation Center Europe (YICE), who reveals his journey at the centre and the future landscape of dairy innovation. Can you describe your journey at YICE and how your background in microbiology, biochemistry and molecular biology has influenced your work there? What initially attracted you to join YICE, and how has your role evolved over the years? I came into contact with Yili at the end of 2015 when they were looking for a director to lead their new R&D centre in the Netherlands. I worked at that time in another dairy company in Finland, and I wanted to move to the Netherlands again. Yili looked for someone with good experience in dairy research, in setting up good collaborations with strategic suppliers, universities and institutes. I had lots of experience in all of these, and being able to set up your own team and research centre was a very compelling setting. I have worked in universities and companies such as Leiden University in the Netherlands, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in the US and Unilever. During that time, Yili partnered with Wageningen University to establish an innovation centre. Through contact and exchanges with Yili, I learned about its vision, its attitude towards innovation and its plans for development at YICE. Yili, the fastest-growing dairy company in the world, sees innovation as a strategy and has a range of ambitious plans. Since my capability and previous experience matched well with Yili’s needs, I joined YICE in 2015. It is fair to say that I had no experience working for a Chinese company, but after good meetings with the senior leaders in Yili, I trusted that it would work. And it did. At Yili, researchers enjoy an open and relaxed atmosphere, where innovation is encouraged, highlighted and supported. Besides R&D, I have also been committed to team management and external communication, helping YICE attract brilliant international R&D talents, and encouraging them to better unleash their potential on this advanced technological platform in a positive atmosphere. Working at Yili also allowed me to gain a comprehensive and profound understanding of the needs of innovation trends in the world’s largest consumer market: China. I have been to Beijing, Shanghai, Hohhot and many other cities, where I have had in-depth exchanges with my Chinese colleagues. Furthermore, I was fortunate enough to contribute to Yili’s globalisation and personally experienced and witnessed Yili’s leaping development from one of the world’s top ten to one of the top five in the dairy industry.

Could you share a significant experience or project from your tenure at YICE that has impacted your career? There have been quite a number of good achievements during the ten years that the Yili Innovation Center Europe now exists. First of all, we built a strong team with very experienced people, each covering certain areas. Areas like nutrition, process and product technology, microbiology, sensory and flavour technology, open innovation experience, dairy science, etc. Then, we led several projects where the results were applied by the business units of Yili. If I have to give one example where we led Yili to the forefront of new developments, it was the area of human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) – these are a key development trend now in infant formulas. We first conducted in-depth research activities with Wageningen University, in which we determined the composition of HMOs in human breast milk. We compared the composition of Chinese and European breast milk in order to see whether there were differences relevant to the development of the next-generation infant formulas closer to the gold standard of breast milk. At the same time, we set up close partnerships with companies that were active in the development of HMOs by precision fermentation. Then, we conducted many research projects to show that there were synergies between HMOs and probiotic strains for the boosting of immunity, gut health and cognition. Many patents were obtained from this work and that brought us in the premier league of companies globally active in this field. I can mention more of such cases, but it shows that good results were obtained and built together with our colleagues in China.

What are YICE's primary goals and mission, and how do they align with Yili's broader objectives? Yili wants to become the leading dairy company globally, and we are growing fast towards that position. We realise that we can only get into that position by strong innovations. That is also where we, and our European centre, come into the picture. Many leading universities and institutes in the field of dairy are based in Europe and there is a long dairy science history here. Moreover, most strategic suppliers, as well as big competitors, have their main R&D centres in Europe. That is why it is good to be based here, in the Netherlands, on the Wageningen University campus, the top university globally in food- and agri-science. It is good to be at the source and to have short communication lines with the key players. That way, we can pick up new ideas, while also collaborating with strategic partners to sharpen the ideas towards the Chinese market, because that is still our main market. 15 innovation centres around the world, including YICE, Innovation Centre Oceania, Southeast Asia Innovation Center and Japan Innovation Center, serve as the pillars of Yili’s global innovation network. After ten years of growth, YICE has become an indispensable part of Yili Group’s globalisation strategy and also the top overseas R&D centre in China’s dairy industry, with effective access to the innovation resources of the Netherlands and even the whole of Europe.

Can you elaborate on how YICE collaborates with universities, research institutes and companies to achieve its objectives, and the different opportunities in R&D? When you want to work well and successfully with universities, research institutes and companies, you have to build partnerships in a win-win setting. Over ten years of development, YICE, as a bridge linking Yili Group to the Netherlands and even the whole of Europe, has collaborated with a distinguished group of universities and research institutes, including Wageningen University, the International Life Sciences Institute, the University of Cambridge, ETH Zurich, the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University, the Technical University of Munich, StartLife and so on. Plus, it greatly helps when people involved know each other and that the collaborations are supported by senior management. When all these things are in place the chances for success are there. You just have to do it then. As YICE celebrates its tenth anniversary, could you discuss any significant new launches or initiatives that the company is unveiling to mark this milestone? On 18 April, we will host a ceremony to upgrade YICE at Wageningen University. We are happy to show many collaborating partners who are invited from various places in Europe the ten key achievements of these ten years. Moreover, we are also happy to officially open our brand-new laboratories and pilot plant, which we just finalised. We also have other big announcements to make at the event, so stay tuned. How does YICE plan to commemorate its tenth anniversary? Any special celebrations or events that will mark this occasion? I mentioned one of the successes of the last few years is the work we did in the area of HMOs for the business unit Powders, producing the next generation of infant formula. Therefore, I’m particularly honoured that this business unit connects a number of its new activities to our ten-year anniversary event. Among that is The Science of Breast Milk: Exploring Breast Milk Nutrients and Microbiomics, as well as the globalisation of the Yili Maternal and Infant Nutrition Institute (YMINI), an institute aiming to provide healthcare professionals and mothers with the latest information on infant and mothers' health. More than 130 guests from organisations, including the International Dairy Federation, China Dairy Products Industry Association, Wageningen University, Nature Journal and the International Life Sciences Institute from China, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, New Zealand and many other countries are expected to attend on the day. Could you highlight some of the key R&D achievements or innovations that the centre has accomplished over the past decade? Apart from work done in the area of infant nutrition, we conducted innovations in the development of new dairy products including the development of new categories like cheese and cream in China. Moreover, we have evaluated, together with the business units, many new technologies and helped to implement those in the new factories in China. We identified new ingredients for the development of dairy products with specific health benefits. For example, we supported our probiotic research team a lot in the development of Yili-own probiotic strains. And last but not least, we also supported our food safety team in Yili with the latest developments to make sure that products are safe and healthy because Yili means the best quality. How has YICE cultivated and maintained its innovation ecosystem with various stakeholders, including universities, research institutes, start-ups and the scientific community? For the strategic partnerships, we have a close collaboration in place. It helped to develop and improve product development. More recently, we also worked a lot with start-up companies, and for that, we developed a systematic approach for scouting and interaction with those parties. It led to an internal database that we now use across all R&D centres in Yili. For the interaction with universities, we are linked to all kinds of organisations to stay in close contact with many of them. For example, we use organisations like ILSI Europe for a number of important areas, but we are also directly connected to some universities for giving guest lectures and so on. Again, knowing the key opinion leaders personally is very helpful to set up new things. What can we expect from YICE in terms of future developments and innovations in the coming years? particularly concerning trends such as health and sustainability? For the coming years, we will stay active in several fields that I have already mentioned, to name a few, those would be: Humanising infant formula (meaning making infant formula closer and closer to the gold standard breast milk); Product development for special populations, and particularly healthy food products for the ageing population; Cheese technology innovations for the Chinese market; Identify technologies to implement functional milk fractions; and disruptive and breakthrough innovations which are significant and of value for our market. Anything else you would like our readers to know? In recent years, Yili has accelerated its global presence and established 15 R&D centres and 81 production bases around the world. Products are now in the markets of more than 60 countries and regions, and Yili is now on the journey to becoming a global player. Although many consumers in Europe do not know our Yili products (yet), which is, of course, a pity, our main market is Asia. I hope this will change for the better in the coming years and that everyone can enjoy our products. Yili’s vision is to be the most trusted global healthy food provider. I hope that YICE will be able to play an even greater role in achieving this vision. And I certainly hope that we can say, as Yili Innovation Center Europe, that we are a strong asset to Yili.