Initiative aims to make upcycled food and ingredients the new industry standard

Foodvalley has launched the Upcycled4Food Initiative to start making upcycled food products and ingredients the ‘new normal’ for producers, supermarkets and food service players in their product development, purchasing and sales.

Introduced during the international “Towards Halving Food waste in Europe” conference, Foodvalley, together with a group of frontrunners from across the value chain in the agrifood sector, said the initiative grew out of the Position Paper “Upcycled Food and Ingredients” published June 18 on the Foodvalley website.

Nearly 50 parties from Foodvalley’s Upcycling Community, along with experts from various sectors such as academia, financial institutions and market research firms, collaborated closely on this publication.

The Paper contains visions and ambitions for optimising the use of side streams in the agrifood chain.

The publication identifies challenges and opportunities in the growing market for upcycled foods and ingredients, and proposes widely desired actions for various stakeholders, such as the public authorities, investors, retailers, food service companies along with ingredient and
food producers. It is argued that when every player in and around the chain is aware of his role and the role of other relevant players, collaboration on the optimal utilisation of side streams within the agrifood chain boosts the impact significantly.

According to the body, the first immediate step in making upcycled food and ingredients the new normal is to launch the Upcycled4Food initiative to improve sales opportunities. This initiative aims to create new collaborations in the chain that result in new innovative products and ingredients as well as to ensure that the production, sourcing, and supply of upcycled food products and ingredients by food manufacturers, foodservice companies, and retailers becomes the new normal. The goal is to create a movement in which more and more such companies in the chain embrace this ambition and sign up to it.

Companies that share the ambition of this initiative are invited to sign up to the start-up initiative of collaborating parties and register with Foodvalley via a contact form.

Jolijn Zwart-van Kessel, innovation lead at Foodvalley notes that by reusing unavoidable side streams from the agrifood chain in food
and ingredients, there is simply less need to produce food, thereby reducing the pressure on climate and natural resources.

“Although much can already be done in terms of the technology, much is still needed to increase both the supply and demand of upcycled food and ingredients,” Zwart-van Kessel says. “We are therefore incredibly proud that together with a group of enthusiastic
partners we are now turning the ambition we described in the Position Paper into concrete actions within our UPcycled4Food initiative. We invite more partners to sign up to grow this movement towards ‘Upcycling the new normal’.”

Nicole Timmerman, business developer circular Duynie Group says Duynie, has the vision to enable a circular agrifood system, where resources are used to their maximum potential.

“By upcycling side streams from the food, beverage, and biofuel industries to their highest and best use. Upcycling side streams from the food industry back into food perfectly fits our circular vision,” Timmermann explains. “A great example of how we are implementing this is the recent certification of our current pet food factory in Cuijk to ‘food grade’ status. We support the UPcycled4Food initiative because we believe that through strong collaborations, we can raise awareness about the importance of resource conservation and build a more efficient and responsible food system.”

Quirine de Weerd, head of corporate affairs Lidl Nederland notes that Lidl wants all the food produced should be with care to reach consumers.

“With our ‘Waste-me-not’ line, we make high-quality products from residual streams from our chain,” de Weerd says. “By working together with suppliers, we save food and make upcycled products the new norm. We expect that the UPcycled4Food initiative will contribute to finding new partners to develop upcycled food products and expand our retail offerings in the future.”

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