DAIRY CENTRE, TRAVEL COMPANION OF THE DAIRY SECTOR “Our milk, our producers, our health”

To address the challenges of the dairy sector of Basque Country and after 15 years of operation, ESNEKI ZENTROA was created as a brand in 2021, under the leadership of the Leartiker Technology Center, to keep responding to the needs of the sector. The objective of the Dairy Centre is to strengthen and serve as a benchmark for the dairy sector, combining research, innovation, and technical knowledge to promote the quality, safety, sustainability, and competitiveness of artisanal production.

Leartiker promotes breast cancer research with its new cell culture laboratory

At the beginning of the year, Leartiker inaugurated the Applied Biomaterials Lab, a space that reinforces its commitment to biomedical research. This new working environment allows for progress to be made on projects that require specific conditions for cell culture and study, such as the one being developed by Ana Zubiarrain Laserna, a researcher in Leartiker's Health area.

SARETZEN, a collaborative network to transform the Basque rural agri-food sector

SARETZEN, an innovation project promoted and energized by the Leartiker technology center, which is committed to collaboration as an engine for change. Its objective is to provide small rural producers with new tools and knowledge that will enable them to diversify and better market their products, thus contributing to the sustainable development of their activities and the environments where they work.

2024, a year of consolidation

2024 has been a key year for Leartiker, with advances in our strategic lines of research, scientific and technological consolidation, and a renewed commitment to People, the environment and cooperation as a driver of transformation.

Lactic acid as an alternative for decontamination of bovine carcasses in Basque abattoirs

The DELAC project, led by Leartiker S.Coop in collaboration with the Urkaiko S.Coop abbatoir, has been successfully completed after 13 months of applied research. This initiative, part of the Basque Government's BERRIKER 2023 programme, had as its main objective to evaluate the use of lactic acid as a technique for decontaminating bovine carcasses, with the aim of improving the hygienic quality of the meat and enabling the production of meat preparations without additives.

Fermenting knowledge for its transfer

From Leartiker's Food Design area, we are working on one of the most ambitious and transformative internal projects of recent years: Transfer FERMATEC. This project has born with a clear vision: to generate technical-scientific knowledge on fermentation processes applied to different food matrices, and to transfer it to the agri-food sector to promote the creation of healthy, sustainable products with added value.

Protein innovation for pets

INNOPET, led by Eroski and Ausolan, with the collaboration of Leartiker Food Design, is a pioneering project that seeks to improve pet nutrition by incorporating functional, sustainable, and innovative ingredients that align with the evolving preferences of today's consumers. The development of this project also involves the active collaboration of various strategic players in the food ecosystem, such as Insekt Label Biotech, thus combining expertise in nutrition, distribution, production and biotechnology. The initiative has been financed by the Mondragon Corporation Science and Technology Plan grants, where Leartiker is the main technological partner responsible for technical implementation.

Development of Components for Electric Vehicles using Polymer Over-Injection and Welding Technologies (Success Story)

Within the framework of the Hazitek programme (Basque Government), Leartiker has carried out an industrial research project in collaboration with the company RPK S. Coop., aimed at generating knowledge and experimental development of new commercial opportunities in the field of electric mobility. Thanks to this initiative, the company has reinforced its technical capabilities in the use of thermoplastic materials and in polymer over-injection and welding technologies, positioning itself strategically to respond to future requests for proposal (RFQ) and access new markets.

Femtosecond laser for the development of microfluidic devices

Our researcher in the Health area, Irene Varela, is currently immersed in her doctoral thesis which aims to study and develop new approaches for precision micromachining technologies for the mass production of thermoplastic microfluidic devices. This research work is being carried out in collaboration with the Macromolecular Chemistry research group of the Department of Physical Chemistry of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).