The hub, which will likely 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’s going to provide 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. Purposes 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 internet worldwide agrifood commerce,” Benoit Buntinx, Director of Enterprise Creation at EIT Meals, informed FoodNavigator.
“The area due to this fact performs a pivotal function 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 must 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 business. Firms resembling PepsiCo, Nestlé and Givaudan have supplied experience to nascent agrifood-tech corporations.
Prior to now, start-ups which have labored within the programme have included Farminsect, which ‘presents farmers an answer to make use of regional natural residues to supply insect larvae’, and Spoontainable, which develops edible ice-creams spoons. Whereas there are as but no confirmed start-ups for Brazil’s hub since functions haven’t opened, start-ups in Brazil and Chile have already expressed curiosity.
The programme “is principally centered on supporting start-ups to be partnership-ready, assist them to run a know-how validation pilot with the appropriate associate in order that it accelerates their entry to the market,” Buntinx informed us.
“Subsequently our most essential worth proposition is to attach the start-ups with our community of over 200 companions from all EU nations (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 supplies most publicity to the start-ups by facilitating their participation in prime agrifood-teach occasions, such because the EIT Meals Enterprise Summit, Future Meals Tech, Anuga, and extra.”
Brazil’s EIT will deal with key themes resembling meals bioprocessing, subsequent era of plant-sourced options, and sustainable meals packaging. The three themes, based on Buntinx, had been chosen “based mostly on the suggestions, curiosity and challenges shared by our EIT Meals companions (particularly corporates), consistent with 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 likely be anticipated to innovate, they will even be chosen in accordance with how far they fulfil FAN’s three mission areas: “More healthy Lives By means of Meals”, “A Internet-Zero Meals System” and “Decreasing Threat for a Truthful & Resilient Meals System”.
“The brand new hub will likely be adopting the identical tips and choice standards as all the opposite FAN Hubs in Europe,” Buntinx informed us. “It signifies that one of the essential eligibility standards is that the making use of start-ups ought to display that they’re creating an revolutionary answer that may straight generate affect consistent with EIT Meals’s three Mission areas.”
