2024 Open Innovation Forum food sector competition held in Dublin
The Open Innovation Forum met in Dublin on 27-28 November, and offered innovative companies the chance to pitch their ideas to change the food, drinks and FMCG sectors for the better to Forum members.
The 2024 Autumn meeting of the Open Innovation (OI) Forum was hosted by Kerry Group in Dublin. Around 70 OI Forum members, guests, keynote speakers and pitchers attended.
The afternoon of Day 1 saw the annual Forum pitching event where 17 start-ups and scale-ups shared their innovations. Each entry aimed to address at least one of the OI Forum priority needs, including sustainable materials extending shelf-life, novel and natural ingredients, AI and big data, traceability, and valorisation of waste.
The 2024 winner was:
AgroSustain helps keep your fruits, vegetables and flowers fresh longer with natural and organic pre- and post-harvest solutions for sustainable production and distribution, from grower to consumer.
The edible coating of AgroSustain helps to extend crop quality during storage and transportation by 2-3 weeks. Due to the invisible physical barrier formed on the surface of the treated crops, the usage of post-harvest fungicides is reduced by 50%. The coating also increases crop salability by 3-4 days, leading to reduced waste in stores by up to 55%.
Highly commended:
Manufacturing processes are often resource-inefficient, with enterprises suffering from high scrap rates, excessive downtime, and unrealised opportunities. Matta is a spin-out from Dr. Sebastian Pattinson’s research group at the Institute for Manufacturing at Cambridge developing AI copilots for advanced manufacturing. These copilots understand how parts are made, automate machines, and communicate across the factory. The outcome: improved part quality, worker upskilling, heightened yield, and new design and manufacturing possibilities that enhance resource-efficiency, resilience and responsiveness.
One of our key innovations addresses the fundamental challenge of how data-hungry modern AI models are. Matta’s core and patent-pending technology addresses this through automatic data labelling and recognising the causes of defects, not just correlations. This allows rapid and easy deployment and integration, while also giving higher confidence in the system outputs and providing explanations that can be used to train operators.
Senoptica is on a mission to cut global fresh packaged food waste with its patented packaging sensor technology. 50% of the world’s fresh food is packed in Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP). On average, 5% of these packs have failed by the time they reach the supermarket shelf, causing the product to go ‘off-before-date’ and leading to food waste. ‘O-B-D’ is the #1 cause of customer complaints to retailers on foods that are packed in MAP. This costs retailers & food companies money and damages their brand reputation. ‘O-B-D’ is caused by failed packs. Senoptica’s technology means that 100% of production can be inspected (vs 0.03% today), increasing the chances of finding a failed pack by >11,000 times compared to current industry practice.
The other shortlisted pitchers, from a very strong set of applications, were:
- PulseON Foods Ltd
- Nutramara
- Blynk+ Drinks
- BioDairy Labs
- MiGut, MicroMimetics
- Circular Food Co
- SomaTech Limited
- Niskus Biotec
- ATMO Technologies GmbH
- ProfilePrint Ltd
- Our Resources Emissions (ORE) Limited
- Foods Connected
- RecommenderX
- Strategic Innovation Limited
About the OI Forum
Established in October 2010, the Open Innovation (OI) Forum offers a programme of structured support and opportunity for companies from all stages of the Food and FMCG value chain, from ingredients and packaging, through brand-owner, manufacturing and the final link: retail.
A central focus for the Forum is to support members in harnessing external innovations from outside their organisations, including by highlighting exciting new ventures, ideas and emerging technologies from start-ups and innovators. Often this presents an ideal symbiotic relationship with creative start-ups needing to grow by building relationships with bigger clients.
To facilitate these connections, the OI Forum hosts regular pitching competitions like this to provide an opportunity for innovators and technology spin-outs, start-ups and SMEs to pitch their ideas or business to large companies.
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