The 2022 Nutreco Feed & Food Tech Challenge is giving startups with the potential to change our industry the opportunity to bring their ideas to life. Nutreco has chosen 15 of the best and brightest entrepreneurs, out of 150 applicants in 48 countries, to embark on this challenge. These teams will pitch their innovations in three categories: improving alternative food proteins, livestock farming and aquaculture.
For the aquaculture category, alternative farming systems, additives, and digital solutions that can promote sustainability and reduce the reliance on antibiotics. The selected teams are:
- Aquanzo: produces sustainable marine proteins.
- Aquarech: delivers a platform allowing African fish farmers to buy feed, access tools to operate their farms and sell fish production.
- CirkulärBio: developing a fungi-based protein solution with a similar amino acid profile as fishmeal and whey.
- Organicin Scientific: creates a bacteriocin-based functional feed additive.
- Tepbac: delivers aquaculture farm management for fish and shrimp farms.
The jurors were Alex Obach, innovation director at Skretting, Nutreco’s aquaculture business line, Maren Hjorth Bauer, Katapult/S2G/Fynd Ocean Ventures and Alexandre Van der Wees, investment director at Creadev.
“Feeding the Future means that we need to deliver enough healthy food to 10 billion people by 2050 in a sustainable way when today we do not manage to properly feed 7 billion without a considerable footprint. If we want to succeed, we will need a lot of feed and food innovation, not only on what kind of food to produce but also on how and where to produce it,” said juror Alex Obach.
For the alternative food proteins, the innovations chosen in this category include cultivated and fermented food proteins:
- Aïo Tech: utilizing microbes along wood industry byproducts as feedstock to sustainably produce lipids than can be used in feeds.
- BioBetter: developed a protein expression plant-based platform to produce complex growth factors for use in cultivated meat.
- Harmony Baby Nutrition: applies cutting-edge biotechnology to mimic the composition of human breast milk.
- Mogale Meats: enables the production of animal meat products through its Cell Cultivated Meat.
- Multus Biotechnology Limited: creates animal-free serum replacements that promote cell growth without expensive nutritients.
The jurors were Rosie Wardle, co-founder and Partner at Synthesis Capital and Susanne Wiegel, head of Alternative Protein Programme at NuFrontiers, Nutreco’s investment arm.
“We have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of innovation potential in the food sector. There’s so much more to come. The next few years will see a rapid acceleration in technology breakthroughs and scale-ups, which will drive a paradigm shift in food production,” said juror Rosie Wardle.
Nutreco experts selected the 15 teams to receive coaching from industry experts and virtually pitch to the jury in June. The top five teams will then be invited to an in-person event in the Netherlands on October 11 this year, in parallel to the Animal AgTech Innovation Summit taking place in Amsterdam. The winning startup will receive a scientific validation trial at one of Nutreco’s research centers.
Find more information about the competition and how to get a virtual seat to hear the 15 best ideas for Feeding the Future here.
