Our group is the leading open innovation network in the field of Food Waste Recovery, aiming at helping food industries and other involved partners in the food chain to recover valuable compounds from food waste, valorise their streams and improve their sustainability. We bring leadership by providing expertise, insights and tools to implement innovations within the frame of bioeconomy, targeting new bio-based products development.
Our world class training program was recently nominated among the finalists of IChemE Awards 2017 in the category of “Training and Development”.
What does “Food Waste Recovery” mean?
The potential of food waste to create new opportunities and markets has been under-estimated until the very recent years. To this line, we defined in 2013 the term “Food Waste Recovery” to underline the prospect of upgrading compounds and ingredients lost within food waste streams by creating high added-value products (e.g. functional foods).
What does “Open Innovation” mean?
It is the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation within organizations and expand the markets for external innovation usage, respectively. For example, when relevant knowledge exists outside the company, managers need to recognize, identify, capture, and manage such knowledge, choosing an appropriate integration mechanism.
How do we help food industries to innovate openly in the field of food waste recovery?
Our experts’ group works closely with the client to understand its needs and identify the most important challenges. We answer the above questions by collecting target information such as:
- the available technologies and the possibilities for licensing them
- integral methodologies to valorize process residues for recovery, energy, composting and other purposes
- identification of valuable compounds, most hopeful applications, best available markets and competition
In a latter stage, we act beyond the industrialization process, monitoring regulatory requirements, managing risk factors, bringing together industry partners, research institutions, and potential customers in an open innovation project.
Ultimately, our aim is to provide clear benefits to the involved partners and help at every level the development and commercialization of their project.
