UGent VEG-i-TEC serves as a living lab within Intelligent-FRY, with a pilot line for fries production that enables realistic experimentation. It connects companies, researchers, and technology providers, promotes systems understanding, shared learning, and co-creation, and accelerates innovation and industrial uptake across the Belgian fries ecosystem.
The production of frozen, pre-fried chips is a highly complex, multi-step process. Variability in raw potato materials, strict quality requirements, constraints around energy and water use, and mounting pressure on process efficiency make innovation both necessary and challenging. Individual companies rarely have the opportunity to investigate these challenges in an integrated way under realistic processing conditions, without disrupting industrial production.
Within this context, the Flanders' FOOD project Intelligent-FRY (VLAIO support HBC.2022.0458 and HBC.2023.0506) serves as an innovation project for the Belgian potato processing sector, with the Belgian Fries Pilot line as a shared experimentation and learning environment.
A living lab at the centre of the fries innovation ecosystem
In the Intelligent-FRY project, the pilot infrastructure sits at the heart of the innovation ecosystem, connecting food companies, technology suppliers, researchers, and cluster organisations in a neutral, pre-competitive setting.
The Belgian Fries Pilot line, coordinated by Flanders' FOOD and part of the potato and vegetable processing pilot line installed at UGent VEG-i-TEC (Kortrijk), acts as the central hub. The pilot line covers the key steps of industrial fries production — peeling, washing, blanching, drying, frying, de-oiling, and freezing — and is embedded in an integrated potato processing environment that mirrors industrial reality at pilot scale.
This infrastructure enables real-life experiments under controlled conditions, a core principle of living labs as defined in the SIXFOLD project. This European project aims to build a strong network of living labs to remove barriers to the implementation of innovative technologies.
From isolated optimisation to systems understanding
Rather than optimising individual process steps in isolation, Intelligent-FRY takes a systemic perspective. Using the pilot line, researchers study how variations in raw material properties, processing parameters, and intermediate products influence one another across the full production chain, and how these interactions affect end-product quality and raw material efficiency.
Thanks to advanced sensors, robust data infrastructure, and state-of-the-art design of experiments from KU Leuven, the living lab enables:
- Simultaneous analysis of multiple processing steps
- Collection of high-quality, comparable datasets across pilot runs
- Development of insights that go beyond trial-and-error testing
In this way, the Belgian Fries Pilot functions as a real-world laboratory where knowledge generation and validation take place in close connection with industrial practice.
Concrete value for companies: a safe space to innovate
For food companies, the living lab approach underpinning Intelligent-FRY offers several clear benefits.
First, the pilot line at UGent VEG-i-TEC provides a safe space to experiment. Companies can explore alternative processing conditions, quality targets, or optimisation strategies without disrupting their production lines or risking product loss. This significantly lowers the barriers to innovation.
Second, the representativeness of the pilot environment ensures strong transferability. Results obtained in the living lab can be translated to industrial scale more quickly and reliably, accelerating the uptake of new insights and technologies.
Third, the living lab creates shared learning at ecosystem level. Multiple companies face similar challenges around potato variability, product consistency, and process efficiency. Intelligent-FRY enables these challenges to be addressed collectively in a pre-competitive setting, while preserving company-specific valorisation pathways.
Co-creation embedded from the start
In line with SIXFOLD principles, Intelligent-FRY actively involves industry throughout the full project lifecycle. More than ten companies participate via the Industrial Board of Advisors (IBA), ensuring continuous feedback between research activities and operational realities.
Through regular meetings, consultations, and direct involvement in pilot testing, companies help steer the living lab towards the most relevant process challenges, quality criteria, and decision-making questions. This co-creation approach ensures the living lab remains responsive, demand-driven, and impact-oriented.
Strengthening a network of living labs
Beyond its direct project outcomes, Intelligent-FRY contributes to a broader network of living labs for the agri-food sector, as envisioned by SIXFOLD. The Belgian Fries Pilot demonstrates how pilot infrastructures can evolve into living labs that:
- Bridge the gap between research and industrial implementation
- Connect supply-side innovation (knowledge and technology) with demand-side needs — coming from and developed together with food companies, machine builders, and technology providers
- Act as catalysts for further innovation, investment, and collaboration
By anchoring strategic research within a shared living lab infrastructure, Intelligent-FRY helps secure Belgium's leading position in frozen fries production and prepares the sector for future challenges.
