The hub, which will probably be based mostly in Campinas, São Paulo, is FAN’s second exterior Europe, after the one in Haifa, Israel, and the primary exterior Horizon Europe-associated states. It would supply a 2-3 month programme for agrifood-tech start-ups, enabling them to speed up, additional validate their know-how, and put together for getting into the market. Functions for start-ups to hitch the programme will open in December.
FAN has expanded to Latin America as a result of it’s a “key area after we are speaking about meals, accounting for 14% of world meals manufacturing and 45% of web worldwide agrifood commerce,” Benoit Buntinx, Director of Enterprise Creation at EIT Meals, instructed FoodNavigator.
“The area due to this fact performs a pivotal position in world meals safety and addressing different international challenges, together with the local weather disaster.”
There are additionally sure rights to contemplate. “There’s a particular have to assist agriculture whereas defending tropical forests and the rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
Agrifood-tech’s new horizons
FAN’s previous hubs, which have included Haifa in addition to Paris, Helsinki, Bilbao, and Munich, have utilised educational and company information to educate agritech start-ups into readiness for going industrial. Firms equivalent to PepsiCo, Nestlé and Givaudan have supplied experience to nascent agrifood-tech firms.
Up to now, start-ups which have labored within the programme have included Farminsect, which ‘affords farmers an answer to make use of regional natural residues to provide insect larvae’, and Spoontainable, which develops edible ice-creams spoons. Whereas there are as but no confirmed start-ups for Brazil’s hub since purposes haven’t opened, start-ups in Brazil and Chile have already expressed curiosity.
The programme “is especially targeted on supporting start-ups to be partnership-ready, assist them to run a know-how validation pilot with the proper associate in order that it accelerates their entry to the market,” Buntinx instructed us.
“Due to this fact our most necessary worth proposition is to attach the start-ups with our community of over 200 companions from all EU international locations (and now Brazil/LATAM), together with analysis centres, corporates, and traders throughout the entire meals system, from major manufacturing to upcycling of meals waste and meals packaging.”
The programme additionally offers start-ups entry to key occasions. “EIT Meals gives most publicity to the start-ups by way of facilitating their participation in high agrifood-teach occasions, such because the EIT Meals Enterprise Summit, Future Meals Tech, Anuga, and extra.”
Brazil’s EIT will deal with key themes equivalent to meals bioprocessing, subsequent era of plant-sourced options, and sustainable meals packaging. The three themes, based on Buntinx, have been chosen “based mostly on the suggestions, curiosity and challenges shared by our EIT Meals companions (particularly corporates), according to EIT Meals’s three Mission areas. We then mentioned with our Brazilian associate which might be essentially the most related themes for LATAM stakeholders, and determined to deal with these three themes.”
Whereas the agrifood-tech start-ups will probably be anticipated to innovate, they may even be chosen in accordance with how far they fulfil FAN’s three mission areas: “More healthy Lives By way of Meals”, “A Web-Zero Meals System” and “Decreasing Threat for a Honest & Resilient Meals System”.
“The brand new hub will probably be adopting the identical pointers and choice standards as all the opposite FAN Hubs in Europe,” Buntinx instructed us. “It signifies that probably the most necessary eligibility standards is that the making use of start-ups ought to exhibit that they’re creating an modern answer that may instantly generate impression according to EIT Meals’s three Mission areas.”
