This summer, UK biomaterials company Ponda and Dutch agriculture firm De Struunhoeve Agri completed their first
joint harvest of typha seedheads from the Burkmeer polder, a Palus Demos site just
outside Amsterdam.
This collaboration, which grew directly out of Palus Demos, turns a Horizon Europe research plot into a working link between farmer and processor. It is a breakthrough for the paludiculture supply chain: De Struunhoeve supplies with Ponda with typha seedheads and Ponda brings its own harvester to the site. De Struunhoeve supports with equipment, transport logistics and access to a cold-storage facility before the material is shipped to the UK.
Palus Demos is explicitly designed to make these connections.
“The initial catalyst was a Palus Demos group visit to the Burkmeer demonstration site,” says Austin Shepherd,
Agricultural Growth Lead for Ponda.
“I was impressed by how well the site was managed, the strength of the bulrush growth and the high density of seedheads, which are particularly important for our products.
“Following the visit, I spoke with Jeroen of De Struunhoeve about how a potential partnership could work in practice.”
For Ponda, it means an additional, reliable source of feedstock for its BioPuff® plant‐based insulation; for De Struunhoeve, it creates a new income stream from the same crop, improving the economics of
growing typha on wet peat.
Jeroen Vrolijk, co‐owner of De Struunhoeve Agri and a long‐time contractor for the local water board and municipality, notes that the partnership was accelerated by the knowledge sharing and connections
enabled by Palus Demos.
“Through the collaboration within Palus Demos, different projects and parties have been connected,” he says.
“This has enabled knowledge sharing and accelerated the development of typha cultivation and the associated value chain.”
The Burkmeer harvest addresses a core bottleneck for Ponda: securing enough high‐quality raw material to scale
production. The company has already turned typha into BioPuff®, a plant‐based alternative to goose down and polyester with life cycle emissions almost 90% lower than conventional options and has attracted interest from major fashion brands and designers.
But scaling requires more feedstock, from more sites, with reliable logistics. The first harvest wasn’t straightforward:
Ponda had to ship its harvester from the UK, arrange customs exemptions, insurance, phytosanitary clean‐down and driver training, then fine-tune the machine on site before harvesting, transporting and preparing the goods for inspection and refrigerated transport.
This was just a trial and more work will need to be done.
“The value chain is still facing a classic chicken-and-egg problem,” says Jeroen.
“Processors need sufficient volume and a reliable supply before they can scale up their processing, while growers need certainty about demand before they are willing to expand cultivation. The business model will therefore still need considerable development over the coming years. Stacking different income streams from the
same crop can play an important role in this.” (See typha diagram)
For EU officials shaping the next rounds of research and innovation funding, the Ponda-De Struunhoeve deal is a concrete example of what Horizon-funded projects are meant to achieve: turning pilot sites into working value chains, connecting farmers, processors and researchers across borders and de-risking early market
formation for nature-positive materials such as horticultural sphagnum moss. It may offer a template for future cross-border feedstock agreements that could help scale paludiculture across the EU.