The EIC Accelerator Backed Food Sourcing's Honey Gels: Did It Work

Energy gels are the sugar shots that runners, cyclists and triathletes squeeze into their mouths mid-race, and the empty plastic sachets are a familiar sight along trails. In 2019 Food Sourcing Specialists, a small Barcelona distributor of healthy and organic food, won an EU grant of €1,897,708.05 to fix both halves of that problem: a gel made from honey and other bee products, packed in a sachet that would compost at ambient temperature if dropped in nature. The project, METAMORFOSIS, had a total cost of €2,711,011.50 and ran from 1 September 2019 to 31 August 2022, according to CORDIS.

Seven years after the award, the record splits in two. The compostable film and injection material the grant paid for exist, carry home-compost certifications according to the Spanish packaging institute ITENE, and are sold by Pack2Earth SL, a company the same two founders registered in January 2022. The gels the EU funded did not reach the market in that packaging on any public record, and Food Sourcing Specialists itself was declared in voluntary insolvency on 15 April 2024, according to the Official Gazette of the Commercial Register (BORME).

Where the Company Stands

The BORME entry published on 22 December 2025 records two court orders of Barcelona Commercial Court No. 3 in voluntary insolvency case 345/2024: a final order of 15 April 2024 declaring the insolvency, and a final order of 17 May 2024 concluding the proceedings and ordering the "provisional closure of the company". The register entry is dated 15 December 2025. The company data service Empresia shows the same entry, while still labelling the company "active"; its last filed accounts are for 2022. A one-month gap between declaration and conclusion is consistent with proceedings closed for lack of assets, but the court orders themselves are not public, so the reason for the conclusion could not be verified.

The website the European Commission listed for the company in 2019, foodfromnature.com, now redirects to a domain sales page. Food Sourcing Specialists has published no statement on the insolvency. With the proceedings concluded and the company provisionally closed in the register, it has in effect shut down.

The Technology: A Gel Sachet That Composts

Conventional energy gels come in multilayer plastic and aluminium sachets, because the contents are semi-liquid, sugary and must keep for months. Home-compostable materials usually let through too much oxygen and water vapour for that. The METAMORFOSIS final report says the company found "no home compostable packaging on the market which was suitable for long-life semi-liquid products", so it developed its own: a food-grade multilayer film, an injection-moulded material for a non-drip cap, and a packet design. It claims a shelf life of "well beyond" six months, against six weeks for its closest competitor, a figure that comes from the company and could not be checked independently.

The gel half was more conventional: five flavours made with honey, royal jelly and other natural ingredients, without refined sugar. The report says all five were formulated, produced in industrial test batches and field-tested with professional and amateur athletes, and that a vanilla recovery drink was added at the request of retailers.

What METAMORFOSIS Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The Commission's list of EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 winners of the 3 April 2019 cut-off names Food Sourcing as the only beneficiary of METAMORFOSIS. The grant agreement was signed on 29 August 2019. The objective was to refine the gels and packaging, industrialise production, register all intellectual property and build a sales pipeline, then capture 2% of the energy gel market within five years of launch, which the company put at €35 million of net sales a year. It also promised to donate 1% of revenue to the bee protection group BeeLife.

The project closed on schedule after 36 months. Its third and last report covers September 2021 to August 2022 and describes a soft launch of the WIN IT gels "in plastic packaging in April 2022", with a move to the company's own home-compostable packaging planned for the second quarter of 2023. The results page lists two deliverables, relaunched websites and an investor-ready business plan, and four trademark filings: WIN IT in the EU and the UK, Beat Best and Pack2Earth. It lists no patent, although the report says applications were filed for "all project patents".

1. Five gel flavours, industrial batchesDeliveredAll five formulated and test-produced, per the CORDIS report.
2. Home-compostable film and cap materialDeliveredDeveloped with ITENE and certified by DIN CERTCO and TÜV Austria, per ITENE; now sold by Pack2Earth.
3. Gels on sale in compostable packagingNot achievedPlanned for Q2 2023; no launch announced by the company or any retailer.
4. 2% market share, €35M yearly salesNot achievedEmpresia puts annual revenue below €500,000; insolvency in April 2024.
5. Patents on the packagingUnverifiedApplications claimed; Forbes España reported two PCT applications for Pack2Earth in 2024, with no numbers given.
6. 1% of revenue to BeeLifeUnverifiedThe final report makes it conditional on being profitable; no donation is public.

The Packaging Moved On

Pack2Earth SL was incorporated on 21 January 2022, seven months before METAMORFOSIS ended, with Françoise de Valera Rose and Glenn Patrick Du Pree as joint directors and the same registered office on Passeig de Gràcia, according to Empresia. ITENE describes Pack2Earth as "a division of Food Sourcing Specialists", and EIT Food's profile of Pack2Earth counts the €1.9 million Horizon 2020 grant in Pack2Earth's own funding history. How the packaging rights passed from the grant holder to the new company, and on what terms, is not public.

Pack2Earth has since raised private money. In February 2024 it announced a round of about €1 million led by the German family office JRV Holding, with Mondelez International, The Food Tech Lab, the Esade BAN investor network and Brigantia Capital, according to Forbes España; Just Food reported the round as $1 million with Mondelez and Sagana. In 2025 it closed €1.6 million led by Swanlaab Venture Factory, according to EIT Food and Ecosistema Startup. Swanlaab and JRV Holding have sat on Pack2Earth's board since November 2025. Forbes España counted 8 staff, more than 20 companies testing the materials and Vicky Foods and Angulas Aguinaga as named clients; EIT Food later reported 14 staff, 25 completed pilots and €150,000 in signed commercial deals.

Why Europe Should Care

The project was built around EU plastics policy. The Single-Use Plastics Directive of 2019 restricted many throwaway plastic items from 2021, which the final report cites as the opening the company saw. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, published in January 2025, goes further on reuse and recyclability, but its compostability mandate under Article 9 covers only a few formats such as tea and coffee bags and fruit stickers from February 2028, as European Bioplastics notes. A home-compostable gel sachet therefore still competes on its merits rather than on a legal requirement.

The Verdict

Food Sourcing Specialists, Pack2Earth and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.