Bridging Circular Food Innovators

24 May 2023

Upcycling Community: Bridging circular food innovators

How do you bridge the gap between food innovators to move towards the increased adoption of circular ingredients? Foodvalley’s Upcycling Community came together yesterday to discuss this pressing question with an inspiring lineup of industry experts.

Creative sessions

Speakers included Unilever’s Analia Betti, who discussed the challenges of upcycling effluent waste in factories. Arjen van Nieuwenhuijzen, R&D and Innovation Director Circular and Net Zero Solutions at Witteveen & Bos, presented opportunities for water treatment of food processing waste streams. 



Eve Martinet-Bareau, Global Innovation Program Director, Re-Imagine Clean™ & Re-Imagine Waste™ at IFF, showed the perspective of an ingredients producer on developing iconic upcycled consumer products.



The Upcycling Community programme ended with presentations from Martin Schreiber, product developer at the Vegetarian Butcher and Robin Fabie, New Business Development Manager Foods BNX at Unilever, about the conditions from a product developer perspective for co-creating iconic circular food concepts. 



Based on those insights, there were creative sessions with all partners, with a good debate about improving collaboration between circular ingredient producers or technology providers and corporate food manufacturers. The insights will be translated into further opportunities to collaborate, share knowledge and explore new product development opportunities within the Upcycling Community.