EIT Food, Europe’s leading food innovation community, hosted its flagship event, Next Bite, on October 15-16, 2024, in Rome. Supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), the event brought together over 900 experts, thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators to foster collaboration and accelerate progress across European food systems.
The event, held over two days, featured discussions and presentations focused on EIT Food’s core missions: promoting healthier lives through food, achieving a net-zero food system, and reducing risks for a fair and resilient food system. Richard Zaltzman, CEO of EIT Food said: “The ambition for this community is growing. We need to think about impact – change that makes a difference. For this, we need three ingredients: hope (e.g. the startups), inspiration (e.g. pioneer farmers, entrepreneurs), and connections.”
Collaborative companies recognised
Highlighting the event was the announcement of the Corporate Startup Collaboration Award, which recognizes corporates that facilitate collaboration with agrifood startups. This year’s winner, Südzucker Group, the world’s largest sugar producer, was celebrated for its impactful partnerships with startups. Based in Germany, Südzucker is the largest sugar producer in the world and produces a wide range of food and animal feed products.
Alliance launches to standardise eco-labelling
In a bid to create standardized eco-labelling across global food systems, EIT Food also launched the International Alliance for Impact Data. This initiative aims to develop widely accepted standards for environmental scoring in the food industry, ensuring companies and supply chains can comply with unified regulations across multiple geographies.
Rewarding innovative startups
During Next Bite, EIT Food announced 15 winners of the 2024 EIT Food Accelerator Network Tech Validation Awards.
€50,000 was awarded to the following European startups:
- AgroGrIN Tech – which collects and transforms the by-products produced by farmers, post-harvest and processing industries, into bio-based, clean-label ingredients, which are fulfilling the food, nutraceutical and cosmetic industries.
- Esencia Foods – which is pioneering the way for sustainable and healthy food options in Europe by developing whole-cut, mycelium-based fish and seafood alternatives.
- NOOVI – which offers a globally unique line of marking pheromones “Pheromark” that prevent pests from laying eggs on crops, without using any toxins.
- Pack2Earth – which offers biobased circular economy materials for the packaging industry.
- Primogene – which produces bioactive ingredients unique to human breast milk and has proven to be crucial for infant development for safe and tailored nutrition to support the growth and development of premature infants optimally.
€30,000 was awarded to:
- Clean Food Group – which brings together pioneering scientific research and partnerships with the world’s leading food and cosmetic manufacturers, to provide healthier, sustainable product choices that have a positive impact on the health of the planet.
- Quest Meat – which is developing ingredients that will make cultivated meat affordable, scalable and sustainable.
- CinSOIL – which offers solutions to enable the agri-food sector to effectively meet its sustainability goals through carbon emissions insetting.
- Senoptica Technologies – which offers sensor technology to reduce global food waste by non-invasively monitoring modified atmosphere packaging in real-time.
- BOB FoodTech – which offers scalable and selective toxin removal solutions for the food and biotech industry.
And €20,000 was awarded to:
- New Wave Biotech – which offers proprietary technology to empower SynBio innovators with the tools to get to market quicker, better and at a low cost.
- Elaniti – which establishes the condition of the soil microbiome, identifying helpful and unhelpful microbes relative to crop performance.
- MarinaTex – which offers a home compostable alternative to plastic film.
- Kokomodo – which crafts real, controlled, climate-resilient cacao, accessible globally all year round, using cellular agriculture technology.
- as well as the Brazilian Tech Validation Award winners:
- Gran Moar – which transforms malt bagasse, a waste product from beer production, into a new food product, special malt flour;
- Typcal – which works with mycelium fermentation to create new ingredients for the food industry.
- Vaca Roxa – manufactures an IoT digital device capable of identifying the degree of bovine mastitis infection.
The winners will use the funding to run projects to further test and accelerate their technology, working closely with EIT Food’s dynamic network of partners, universities, research centres, facilities and resources across Europe.
Next Bite showcased the innovation, collaboration, and passion driving the future of food, solidifying EIT Food’s role as a leading force in creating a sustainable, resilient, and healthier food system for Europe and beyond.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/10/taking-the-next-bite-into-the-future-eit-food-announces-new-innovation-opportunities-sponsored/
