Bringing together research institutions, fruit cooperatives, processing businesses and a producer association, ProEnergy developed three functional pulps, two salad dressings and a fermented beverage containing at least 33% co-products, alongside edible films and bioactive extracts from pineapple skins and cores. For residues unsuited to food use, anaerobic co-digestion trials using non-conforming peaches achieved a 210% increase in biogas yield compared with digestion alone.

Backed by €389,500 in Rural Development Programme funding, the four-year project generated 11 scientific papers and six postgraduate theses, giving businesses practical evidence on which valorisation routes, food, ingredients or bioenergy, are worth pursuing for specific types of processing residue.

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