Bertrand Martzel, CEO of Creal. Photo: CarlMagnus Johansson
cReal Food, in which Lindéngruppen is the largest shareholder, has a new CEO who seeks to initiate an evolution in the food industry with unique oat-based ingredients that cut carbon emissions, waste and dairy dependency.
Lindéngruppen, together with other investors, backed cReal with a SEK 300 million investment in early 2025. Since then, cReal has opened a new production facility in Bjuv, Sweden, and begun delivering highly sustainable oat-based ingredients to customers producing ice cream, yogurt, chocolate and baked goods.
We catch up with Bertrand Martzel, who became CEO of cReal during the autumn.
Our products have no equivalent in the market, so cReal is on an exciting journey to create a market from scratch by establishing revolutionary new ingredients for the food industry. Our two products – dried oat extract that can replace milk powder and oat fibre rich-in-protein – have the potential to become key ingredients in a more sustainable food industry.
Our products are plant-based, substitute milk powder and can cut CO2 emissions by up to 78 per cent while maintaining taste, nutritional value and functional versatility. We also use a patented zero-waste method to avoid process waste during production. Oat is also a climate-resilient crop that has huge potential to contribute to more resilient food production.
I have a food technologist background with more than 30 years working in the food industry. I spent 15 years with the bioscience company Chr. Hansen working with business development and sales management in the US, Singapore, China and Denmark. The five years before joining cReal, I worked for the US food ingredient company Kalsec as an executive officer leading the company’s pre-sales activities – including product management and sales excellence.
I bring business development experience and my passion for sales and business creation, which is exactly what cReal needs right now to accelerate sales. My international background and established global network will also prove useful as we expand throughout Europe and beyond.
1. Application excellence – ‘Application excellence’ is our first prerequisite, which will involve showing more customers that we understand what they do – by producing prototype products with our ingredients that match their requirements on quality, nutrition and taste.
2. Operational excellence – ensuring that our production plant is fully operational and aligned with our project plan.
3. Expand our customer base – By attracting more customers and building our project pipeline, we will expand our customer base. Our plant has the capacity to produce 2,500 tonnes of dried oat extract and 800 tonnes of oat fibre rich-in-protein.
In five years, I expect that we have exceeded the production capacity at our plant and established additional production capabilities to meet the growing market demand. This would mean we have succeeded in establishing cReal products as mainstream ingredients in the food industry. In fact, I would like to see our products become the gold standard in the industry for customers all around the world that want to be less dairy dependent, and to produce tasty and more sustainable food.
About cReal Food
cReal Food is a Swedish food-tech company focused on creating oat-based ingredients that offer practical, climate-conscious alternatives to dairy powders. The company works with local farmers and industry partners to support more resilient and resource-efficient food production that tastes great.
