Last updated: 16-07-2026

Lucas Metsaars: Potato Protein's Bridge to Europe's Hybrid Foods Category

Lucas Metsaars is a business development manager at Aviko Rixona who has built one of the most followed LinkedIn voices in the European protein transition, using potato-based ingredients Potato Cheezz and Potato TexaPure to argue that hybrid meat and dairy, not full substitution, is where retailers will win shelf space fastest.

Metsaars works out of Den Bosch for Aviko Rixona, the dried-potato producer owned by agricultural cooperative Royal Cosun. Before that, he built commercial traction for PLANT B Egg's plant-based and hybrid bakery ingredients, and earlier still worked at Bonduelle and Selecta. That trajectory, from vegetable processing to a plant-based egg alternative to potato-derived functional ingredients, gives him a formulator's view of the value chain that few LinkedIn commentators in this space can match.

Who Is Lucas Metsaars and Why Retailers Read Him

Lucas Metsaars is the business development manager driving Potato Cheezz and Potato TexaPure into European food industry, food service, and retail channels for Aviko Rixona. He was named to the Food100 2024 list of Dutch food-system changemakers, and he regularly comments on the pace of the plant-based and hybrid transition in interviews with trade press such as Levensmiddelenkrant. His self-described shift from a diet built around chicken, eggs, salmon, and quark to an 80 percent plant-based pattern is the personal narrative he uses to frame a broader industry argument: full substitution is hard, and hybrid is the more realistic near-term path.

Potato Cheezz and Potato TexaPure: The Ingredient Case

Potato Cheezz is a plant-based cheese alternative and Potato TexaPure a juiciness and structure enhancer, both made from whole potatoes, and both built to work in fully plant-based products and in hybrid meat or dairy formulations. Aviko Rixona positions TexaPure specifically as a texture and mouthfeel solution for hybrid meat, where it functions as a fat mimic without altering flavour. This is the ingredient-supplier end of the same shift the European hybrid meat opportunity session at Hybrid Foods Europe addresses from the brand-owner side.

The Hybrid Argument: "Nobody Wants to Pay a Premium for Sustainability"

Metsaars' recurring LinkedIn and press argument is that supermarkets already sell hybrid meat, dairy, and egg-adjacent products without labelling them as such, because retailers fear negative consumer reaction to the word "hybrid." In his Levensmiddelenkrant interview, he pointed to Lidl, Dirk, and Poiesz as the first Dutch retailers to actively introduce hybrid mince, while noting that most other hybrid listings go uncommunicated. He argues the category will keep expanding into dairy and fish regardless of whether retailers name it, and that cost reductions from hybrid formulation should be passed through to shelf price rather than pocketed as margin.

From PLANT B Egg to Aviko Rixona: A Career Built on Reformulation

Metsaars spent several years at PLANT B Egg building distribution for plant-based and hybrid bakery applications, including plant-based egg alternatives used across cakes, quiches, and patisserie, before moving to Aviko Rixona's potato-ingredient business in 2024. That bakery-sector grounding is unusual in a category dominated by meat and dairy formulators, and it shapes his public commentary: he treats egg replacement, dairy replacement, and meat replacement as one continuous reformulation problem rather than three separate categories.

Where Potato-Based Ingredients Sit in the Wider Value Chain

Aviko Rixona sits inside Royal Cosun, the same cooperative structure behind Cosun Beet Company, whose sugar beet and faba-derived ingredients are already part of the European hybrid meat and dairy ingredient stack presented at Hybrid Foods Europe's Innovation Plaza. For category managers mapping the hybrid ingredient landscape, potato-based functional ingredients now sit alongside pea, faba bean, sugar beet, and mycoprotein as commodity crops repurposed for hybrid texture, fat replacement, and binding. Sessions on the wider B2B hybrid food and ingredients opportunity and on the European hybrid dairy retailing outlook cover the formulation and go-to-market questions this ingredient shift raises directly.

Comparison: Potato Cheezz vs Potato TexaPure

The FoodConNext community has tracked more than 100 ingredient developers through its Global Research Ecosystem, and potato-derived functional proteins are one of the fastest-growing sub-categories entering that pipeline in 2026, alongside faba and sugar beet fractions from the same Cosun group.

Take-Home Messages

Commercial

• Aviko Rixona's Potato Cheezz and TexaPure show that hybrid ingredient innovation is not confined to pea and soy protein isolates.

• Retailers already stock hybrid products without labelling them as such, per Metsaars' own market observation (Levensmiddelenkrant, 2025).

• Category building benefits from potato-based ingredients priced against commodity crop economics, not premium isolate pricing.

• Cross-category formulators, meat, dairy, and bakery combined, bring a broader reformulation toolkit than single-category specialists.

  
  

Technical

• Potato TexaPure functions as a fat mimic for juiciness in hybrid meat without adding flavour load.

• Potato Cheezz targets melt and mouthfeel parity with dairy cheese, a persistently hard reformulation problem.

• Whole-potato processing routes reduce reliance on isolated protein fractions for structure.

• Ingredient sourcing from Royal Cosun's cooperative base connects potato and sugar beet innovation under one value chain.

  
  

Verdict & Next Step

Lucas Metsaars represents a category of voice the hybrid foods transition needs more of: someone inside an ingredient supplier's commercial team, translating formulation choices into a public argument for retailers and brand owners. His potato-based ingredient case sits close to the sessions on hybrid meat, hybrid dairy, and the wider ingredients opportunity on the programme at Hybrid Foods Europe, Van der Valk Zuidas, Amsterdam, 14-16 September 2026. Delegate places and Innovation Plaza slots are moving ahead of the September dates. Register now to sit alongside the ingredient suppliers, retailers, and formulators shaping this category before the room fills.

About Gerard Klein Essink

Gerard Klein Essink is Founder & CEO of FoodConNext Foundation. He has run an international plant-based foods and proteins community for more than 20 years, published numerous industry reports, and written innovation reports on proteins for the Dutch government. He has advised the Canadian government on its pulse strategy, produced strategic outlook reports for Pulse Canada and the Australian Grains Research & Development Corporation, and leads FoodConNext Foundation's 100+ member Global Research Ecosystem. He has led multiple Horizon EU protein-transition projects, including Metaphor, Prominent, Plenitude, Profuture, HealthFerm, and Giant Leaps, and spoke at the European Parliament and European Commission in June 2026.

About FoodConNext Foundation

At FoodConNext Foundation, we believe that the future of food lies at the intersection of innovation, sustainability, and global collaboration. Our foundation is dedicated to accelerating the transition toward more resilient and responsible food systems by connecting key stakeholders across the agri-food ecosystem.

Our Mission

FoodConNext Foundation exists to bridge gaps in the global food system — bringing together entrepreneurs, researchers, policymakers, and investors to co-create solutions that address some of the world's most pressing challenges, including food security, sustainability, and nutrition.