Protealis Secures New VLAIO Grant to Scale MagNfix™ Soy Seed Coating

Protealis Secures New VLAIO Grant to Scale Its Highly Innovative Soy Seed Coating Technology

16 Dec 2025

Faster Scaling of Innovation Enables Farmers to Easily Grow High-Yield Soy in Europe

Ghent (Belgium), 16 December 2025 – Protealis, the European specialist in non-GMO legume seeds and seed technologies, today announces it has received new funding from VLAIO, the Flemish Agency for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. The funding will support the RhizoScale project which aims to accelerate the scaling of Protealis’ highly innovative soybean seed coating MagNfixTM, allowing farmers in Europe to easily grow high-yield, high-protein soybean in Europe.

Benjamin Laga, CEO of Protealis, reacted: “This VLAIO support is key to scaling both our team and production capacity as we bring our innovative soy seed coating, MagNfix™️, to market. It enables us to accelerate our commercial activities so European farmers can benefit sooner from an easy-to-use and highly effective seed coating that supports more reliable nitrogen fixation, higher yields, and increased protein content.”

Today, over 34 million tonnes of soy is imported annually[1] in Europe, mainly from Brazil, Argentina and the US. The growing food and feed markets make Europe heavily reliant on imported soy, and related import taxes. Cultivating soy locally in Europe has historically been difficult because of long daylight hours and the absence of natural Bradyrhizobium bacteria in European soils. Soybean plants need these bacteria to effectively extract atmospheric nitrogen from the air and fix it in the root nodules into a form the plant can use to grow and produce protein. Without these bacteria, soy delivers low yields.

Over the past decade, soybean acreage in Europe has grown steadily, driven by the introduction of higher-performing varieties adapted to European growing conditions. Current soybean seed inoculation methods however still struggle to deliver consistent results at farm scale. Whether applied at the factory or on-farm, many existing approaches rely on bacterial strains that are not adapted to local soils, are difficult to store or transport, and are applied unevenly. In addition, most inoculants have a very limited shelf life: live bacteria must be applied within one to two days before planting or they rapidly lose effectiveness. These constraints make large-scale inoculation impractical and limit the yield and protein potential farmers can achieve.

Protealis’ seed coating technology[2] MagNfixTM differentiates through the use of a unique local Bradyrhizobium bacteria strain that remains biologically active even in this temperate Western European climate. Most importantly, the coating will be offered as a ready-to-sow solution, replacing today’s cumbersome inoculation steps with a simple, farmer-ready approach. After several years of testing and field trials demonstrating consistent improvements in yield and protein content compared with existing inoculation products, Protealis is now ready to scale its solution. The company is expanding its team and preparing the industrial activities required to bring its unique seed coating technology into large-scale production.

Soybean production in Europe reached 3.00 million tons in 2024, making soy the leading plant protein crop before peas, faba beans and lupins[3]. Demand for locally grown, non-GMO soy continues to rise in Europe, driven by growth in plant-based food markets, sustainability targets, and high import costs. This trend aligns with Protealis’ mission: since its inception in April 2021, the company has rapidly built a portfolio of high-performance, early-maturing soybean varieties tailored to cooler northern and central European regions.