CTAEX is a private non-for-profit R&D Centre located in the region of Extremadura, south-west of Spain, founded in 2000 by an association of different and complementary agri-food related entities. Its business-nature ensures the Multi-Actor Approach (MAA) and that newly developed technical solutions meet real life needs. CTAEX is certified as Technological Centre and as Technology Transfer Office (TTO).
CTAEX tackles various scientific areas of the agri-food value chain, covering sustainable agronomy and food production, biotechnology, and by-products valorisation.
The Centre brings together, in the same location, experimental farms, food pilot plants, kitchen and tasting rooms, facilities to produce food, food technology and food quality control, tasting rooms, physical chemical and microbiological laboratories, and equipment and process control facilities, so that it is possible to follow the complete agri-food process, “From Farm to Fork” « , carrying out both agricultural and food research.
The Centre has acquired vast expertise in the development of R&D Projects at regional, national, and international level, aiming at improving the competitiveness of the European agri-food sector from a market-oriented approach.
CTAEX is made up of 56 partners or associates, belonging to the most representative agri-food sectors, assuring the co-creation and sharing of knowledge among them (MAA), and supporting the Quadruple Helix Model of innovation system (Science, policy, industry, and society).
Agroindustry sector embodied in CTAEX includes industrial tomato primary and secondary processing, tobacco production; winery; rice; olive grove, table olives and olive oil; ecological agriculture; livestock and agri-food residues management.
CTAEX´s Agricultural Department has at its disposal green houses and 23 hectares of experimental farms (“ECO” certified among them) indicated for pot trials and large-scale cultivation and equipped with an irrigation general installation in total covering with a 1.000 m2 storage pool and irrigation water supply wells. The R&D lines of this area cover a wide variety of experiences such as development and selection of varieties of any crop, research of new crop techniques, new crops exploration, crop protection and alternative agricultural production (integrated and ecological). Main crops covered by the department are horticultural ones.
CTAEX´s Food Technology Department is equipped with both: facilities and machinery that make it possible to cover a great variety of industrial food products elaboration processes at pilot scale.
Services offered are:
Development of new products: semi-finished products, prepared products, functional and dietetic foods.
Diversification of traditional foods
Processing technologies: fourth and fifth range, concentration, baking, aseptic, multiple barriers, etc.
Packaging and wrapping.
Sensory evaluation
Other services: shelf-life studies, ingredient evaluation, optimisation of formulations, reconstitution studies, manufacturing of product samples for market research.
For its part, CTAEX´s Analytical Department carries out analysis for the agrifood sector of the area. Apart from the external companies´ agrifood matrices analysis, this Dept. addresses R&D lines related to the extraction, isolation and stabilisation of chemical interesting compounds found in agricultural and food residues and by-products. This department is highly specialised in agrofood kind of matrices.
CTAEX provides project results´ diffusion and dissemination through its Technology Transfer Office (TTO). CTAEX has launched several Technological Observatories https://ctaex.com/observactaex/, as platforms to transfer the latest technologies and research results in the field of R&D&I applicable to the agrifood sector.
The Centre has acquired vast expertise in the development of R&D Projects at regional, national, and international level. CTAEX keeps on working today aiming at improving the competitiveness of the European agri-food sector from a market-oriented approach.
CTAEX belongs to several Platforms such as Technological Platform on vegetal Biotechnology (BIOVEGEN), Technological Platform Food for Life Spain (PTF4L Spain), Spanish Federation of Technological Centres (FEDIT) and Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC).