Food Tech Innovation Awards 2021 winners announced

Winners of the Food Tech Innovation Awards 2021 have been announced, as part of the Food4Future world summit event. The awards were presented on 16 June 2021 at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Spain) and sought to recognise and celebrate the most innovative proposals that offer a disruptive approach to customer experience or management, and innovative business models or technology that are making a change in the food sector.

Category winners:

The most innovative solution on digitalisation award for the food and beverage industry: Chemometric Brain

This category seeks to recognise the work and effort of the company, platform, solution or technological application that is impacting and transforming the food and beverage industry, its sales model, its production, process, contact with the consumer or value proposition through a solution linked to the digital and technological sphere.

Chemometric Brain deploys an easy-to-use quality control software based on NIR technology to identify the components of any ingredient or food product in powder, liquid, solid or gel in just a few seconds using Machine Learning and AI and hosting libraries of products in a unique-of-its-kind cloud-based platform.

Henrik S Kristensen, CEO of Chemometric Brain, commented: “This award boosts our motivation to continue driving forward our project to facilitate food companies the access to easy-to-implement, inexpensive and highly effective technology to digitize quality along the entire supply chain to ensure quality, traceability and food safety.”

Best Sustainability Project: Blendhub

This category seeks to recognise the work and effort of the company, platform, solution or technological application that is impacting and transforming the food and beverage industry, its sales model, its production, process, contact with the consumer or value proposition through a solution linked to the digital and technological sphere.

Henrik S Kristensen, founder and CEO of Blendhub, commented: “This award is the industry’s recognition of Blendhub’s innovative business model, based on multi-localization and technology to help any food company produce in a more efficient and sustainable way anywhere in the world.”

Blendhub is deploying a global network of localised food production hubs supporting anyone launching food and nutritional products faster, safer and cheaper, anywhere in the world, by offering infrastructure as a service. This model involves a global network of localized food production hubs, closer to raw materials and final consumers; cost decrease in food products by 20% to 50% and lower environmental impact; and a fully replicable model from ideation to production anywhere in the world.

Healthy Food: Healthy Food Iberica

The aim of this award is to recognise the work and effort of the company, project or platform that promotes an innovative and/or scientific solution that promotes healthy eating. This award contributes to the promotion of innovative projects developed throughout the value chain of the food industry, as well as projects within the framework of Foodtech whose solution has a direct impact on healthy eating.

Healthy Food Iberica’s Verdeo is an innovative ingredient, being a solid fat based on olive oil in a traditional sector that needs transformation. The project provides a solution to the industry and consumers looking for alternatives, not substitutes.

The most innovative Food Tech startup: NUCAPS Nanotechnology

This award is aimed at the most innovative startups with the greatest impact on digitalisation, sustainability and health in the Foodtech sector. Whether they are at a very early stage or at a more advanced stage, innovation and disruption in the solution itself will be valued. This category received applications submitted directly from the Foodtech Startup Forum of Food 4 Future – Expo FoodTech.

NUCAPS Nanotechnology improves people’s health as the company helps to produce better food, supplements and drugs by making nutritional ingredients stable, easy to absorb, healthy and natural. Nanocapsules of Food Proteins are a natural, safe and efficient solution for oral administration of bioactive ingredients, drugs and probiotics.

The best Automatic and Robotics solution: Deep Detection

This category is focused on the use of automation and robotics to boost the competitiveness of production processes or into factories. Projects focused on the field of innovation, research and development between industrial companies, technology centres or robotics manufacturers could also be presented for the award.

Deep Detection’s Photonai is a photon counting, multi-energy x-ray camera designed to step-change industrial inspection capabilities for quality and safety. It detects foreign bodies, defects and flaws at higher resolution and lowers transmitted energy than is possible in manufacturing today. This means even small pieces of currently undetectable objects, like plastics, can be identified. Simultaneously, it can differentiate between materials to measure the composition of raw materials and products.

The list of winners and finalists for each category at the awards can be viewed at: www.expofoodtech.com/food-tech-innovation-awards-2021.

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