Many startups applied. 15 made it to the public vote. Now just five remain. The 2025 Igeho Rising Star Award is designed to provide emerging companies in hospitality with an opportunity to showcase their businesses, raise awareness of their innovations, and connect with industry professionals.

As Switzerland’s leading international hospitality industry platform, Igeho aims to use this award to drive innovation by offering startups a platform and networking opportunities, in collaboration with Swiss Food and Nutrition Valley. 

So who are the lucky five finalists? We sat down with them all to find out what sets them apart and why they think they deserve to be crowned winners of the 2025 Igeho Rising Star Award.

🐟 Catchfree – Plant-based seafood alternatives

What we do:
Catchfree reimagines seafood – without the fish. We craft plant-based alternatives that deliver the taste and texture of the ocean, without harming marine ecosystems.

Why we deserve to win:
We’re not just offering another alt-protein – we’re tackling one of the most unsustainable sectors in food. Winning this award would spotlight innovation that protects our oceans and supports a more resilient food system.

♻️ Circunis – Digital marketplace for surplus food

What we do:
Circunis is a smart B2B platform that connects businesses with surplus food to buyers who can use it — turning waste into value through real-time, traceable transactions.

Why we deserve to win:
Food waste is a trillion-dollar problem, and we’re solving it with tech that’s easy to adopt and scale. This award would amplify a solution that’s good for both the planet and the bottom line.

🌾 Foodflows – Authentic farm-to-table sourcing with Brazilian growers

What we do:
Foodflows improves how chefs and restaurants source foods from abroad — making supply chains shorter, fresher, and fairer through a collective and innovative platform.

Why we deserve to win:
We’re bringing transparency and trust back into food sourcing and onto menus, addressing the root cause rather than the symptoms of our food system’s issues.

🤖 GoNina – AI-driven forecasting for catering businesses

What we do:
GoNina uses AI to predict demand in food businesses like bakeries — helping them order smarter, prep efficiently, and reduce food waste without compromising their core offering.

Why we deserve to win:
We help food businesses thrive in an unpredictable world. With rising costs and high waste, our tech empowers businesses to stay ahead — and that’s the kind of innovation the food sector needs.

🍄 Yumame Foods – Innovative fungi-based food products

What we do:
Yumame harnesses the power of fungi to create delicious, nutritious, and sustainable food — offering a new generation of minimally processed, plant-based products without compromise. 

Why we deserve to win:
We’re not following trends — we’re setting them. Our fermentation-based approach unlocks scalable, tasty, and nutrient-rich plant-based food that can transform how we eat.

Pitching to an expert jury

All finalists will present their solutions on the Igeho 2025 stage on November 18, and answer questions from a jury composed of Swiss leaders in the field.

• Pascal Bieri, Co-Founder of Planted
• Dr Claus-Heinrich Daub, Professor of Sustainable Business Management at FHNW
• Marina Helm Romaneschi, Marketing & Innovation Strategy at Swiss Food Research
• Christine Schäfer, Senior Researcher at the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute. 
• Rebecca Clopath, an Alpine natural chef
• Christian Gerber, Head of Innovation Management at ZFV.

All 15 start-ups that participated in the public voting for the Rising Star Award will have the opportunity to showcase their innovations to the Swiss hospitality audience over two days at Igeho 2025 in Basel. In addition to the five finalists, the following start-ups will also be exhibiting at the trade fair: Actidot, FoodFor, Hexafed, LOVYÜ, Niatsu, Sanvitafood, Saya Suka, SwissMiso, and TrueFoods.

www.igeho.ch 

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Valley partner, Nestlé R&D has teamed up with IBM Research to develop new tools that leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence and deep tech to bring breakthrough innovations to life. This research collaboration has led to the development of a generative AI tool that can identify novel high-barrier packaging materials.

Why Packaging Innovation Matters

Packaging helps to protect food and beverages while also preventing food waste. Nestlé is continuously reducing the use of virgin plastic, pioneering the use alternative materials and novel technologies, and moving to recyclable mono-material and paper-based solutions. Identifying new packaging materials that meet each product’s functional needs while ensuring food safety and quality is often meticulous. In some cases, this requires years of research.

Nestlé and IBM scientists leveraged AI-based processing techniques1 to construct a knowledge base of known materials from public and proprietary documents. Subsequently, the team fine-tuned a fit-for-purpose chemical language model on this curated corpus, enabling it to learn the representation of the molecular structures. Using that knowledge, the teams leveraged the recently developed regression transformer2 by IBM Research to learn the correlation between key structural molecular features and the resulting physical-chemical properties. The resulting model can now propose entirely new high-barrier packaging materials that shield sensitive products from moisture, temperature swings and oxygen.

Identifying future packaging materials

Nestlé will utilize this novel technology to identify future packaging materials, while considering cost, recyclability, and functionality.

Stefan Palzer, Nestlé Chief Technology Officer: “This novel AI-powered language model, developed in collaboration with IBM Research, illustrates how Nestlé is leading the digital transformation within the food and beverage industry. In the future, such breakthrough technology could be used to optimize the development of more sustainable packaging solutions across product categories.”

Alessandro Curioni, IBM Research VP Europe & Africa: “We do believe that Generative AI will continue to disrupt scientific discovery, impacting the core business of all knowledge-based industries, allowing critical differentiation and sustainable growth.”

Beyond Packaging: AI Across Nestlé’s Operations

Nestlé continues to leverage AI, machine learning, data science and automation to support innovation and help manage complexities. For example, Nestlé has developed a recipe optimization tool that uses advanced algorithms to help product developers better manage tradeoffs between ingredients, nutrition, cost and sustainability, while still meeting consumer expectations. The company also uses digital twins of equipment and production lines to optimize manufacturing processes and has developed digital tools to deliver personalized nutrition solutions for people and pets.

Nestlé recently announced the creation of a new R&D center for deep tech, a first-of-its-kind in the food and nutrition industry. The new center will screen, test and develop new generations of sensors, robots, coding systems, high-performing AI and virtual/mixed reality solutions to increase efficiency in research, innovation and operations.

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Valley partner Bühler is making strides in bridging industrial challenges with innovation through Scale-Up Day, held during the company’s Networking Days. On June 25 in Uzwil, the Scale-Up Day brought together 21 carefully selected, high-impact scale-ups – mature start-ups with proven technologies – to connect directly with Bühler’s global customers, partners, and investors.

With companies focused on food system transformation, climate mitigation, and sustainable materials, Scale-Up Day created a platform for building partnerships and multiplying real-world solutions. 

“Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. These companies are solving problems our customers face today, or will face soon,” said Thierry Duvanel, Director of Innovation at Bühler North America. “By giving them this platform, we hope to spark new partnerships, fresh ideas, and real business opportunities.”

The aim of Scale-Up Day was to help solve real problems facing Bühler’s customers. By carefully selecting companies that address defined industry challenges in food, sustainability, and climate solutions, the event created opportunities for synergies, partnerships, and concrete action. Whether that’s joint go-to-market, deployment with customers or access to financing, this global network offers huge potential for multiplication – enabling scale-ups to grow their businesses while multiplying the impact of their solutions.

Each scale-up had access to the decision-makers attending Networking Days, encouraging in-depth conversations and potential collaborations. “We wanted our customers to walk away with not just inspiration, but action points and real partnerships that lead to real deployment,” said Duvanel. “At the same time, the scale-ups had a unique opportunity to connect with potential multiplication partners – those who can help grow their businesses while scaling the impact of their solutions.”

Transforming the world

Mature start-ups selected for this year’s Scale-Up Day offer proven technologies – not just early-stage ideas. Many are already operational, funded, and scaling, with strong teams, validated solutions, and a clear industrial fit. Over a rigorous six- to eight-week selection process, Bühler collaborated with leading venture capital firms and partners – including Big Idea Ventures, SOSV, the Swiss Entrepreneur Fund, Synthesis Capital, ICOS Capital, and the MassChallenge Switzerland start-up accelerator – to identify candidates with traction, relevance, and the capacity to grow.

“We look for big ideas which, if we can make them a reality, will completely transform the world,” said Andrew Ive, Founder of Big Idea Ventures. “We believe that working with the best start-ups and bringing them together with the best corporates allows us to scale up these technologies that are going to have a positive global impact.”

The selection process resulted in a curated group of companies delivering tangible solutions across three innovation fronts: food systems transition, including novel ingredients, fermentation, alternative proteins, and food processing; climate change mitigation, encompassing industrial decarbonization, energy systems, and circularity; and sustainable materials, focused on biomanufactured and low-impact materials ready to scale.

Multiplying impact together

The Scale-Up Day took place as part of Bühler’s Networking Days 2025, a global industry platform that convened over 1,200 decision-makers at the company’s headquarters in Uzwil. 

Held every three years, the event brings together stakeholders from the food, feed, and sustainable mobility and materials sectors. With the 2025 theme “Multiplying impact together,” the event’s focus was on the solutions available today that build successful businesses and create positive impact at scale. Within this context, the scale-ups were provided with a unique opportunity to present their solutions to an audience of leading players in relevant industries. 

Farmtory, for example, has built a flexible, low-cost biomanufacturing system to produce peptides. The company, from Suzhou, China, has already commercialized a peptide-based sweetener based upon brazzein, a sweet-tasting protein that occurs naturally in oubli, a fruit from Central Africa, as well as a range of peptides that increase taste sensitivity to salt, allowing food producers to reduce the salt content of their recipes. 

“We are here to talk to anyone who might benefit from our peptide production capabilities,” said James Wu, CEO and Co-Founder of the company. “And we are also looking for partners to help us meet our ambition of producing a comprehensive range of dairy-replacement proteins at large scale.”

Bühler reports it recognizes that the challenges industry faces are too big to be tackled by any one company. The Scale-Up Day is part of its ongoing commitment to develop and nurture a global innovation ecosystem of start-ups, accelerators, incubators, and investment funds.

“What makes our approach unique is our culture of innovation, experimentation and openness, and our willingness to share our ecosystem with our customers,” said Ian Roberts, CTO at Bühler. “The Scale-Up Day had the potential to create powerful, lasting partnerships – connecting companies in our customer base, which have big supply chains and global reach, with a curated group of smaller businesses with great ideas and proven technologies. That’s the sort of marriage that creates multiplication.”

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More than 1,200 industry leaders from 90 countries gathered at Bühler Group’s headquarters in Uzwil to explore how to sustainably feed and move 10 billion people by 2050. Under the theme “Multiplying impact together,” the Bühler Networking Days 2025 showcased how innovation, collaboration, and bold leadership can drive the transformation needed across the global food system.

Held every three years, Networking Days has become a flagship event for the food, feed, and mobility sectors – bringing together decision-makers, researchers, and technology providers to exchange solutions and foster collective action. This year’s edition was the largest and most diverse to date, underscoring the event’s growing role as a platform for accelerating progress toward sustainable value chains.

Big change needs bold leadership

Speaking at the event, Bühler Group CEO Stefan Scheiber described the power of collaboration and cooperation to multiply the impact of innovation. “Every breakthrough, partnership, and bold decision has the potential to create ripples – spreading knowledge, inspiring action, and driving progress,” he said. “But their true power lies in the multiplier effect: when these ripples connect, they create waves of change. By working together, businesses and industries don’t just add incrementally to progress – they accelerate it by compounding their influence and scaling solutions far beyond what any single effort could achieve.”

Ian Roberts, Bühler Group CTO said: “It is so clear now that we must act with focus and collaboration to bring the impact necessary to preserve the healthy state of our planet. I am energized by the potential and willingness shown by our 1,200 guests – not to simply talk, but to build concrete actions and to share what they have already achieved to accelerate group learning and impact multiplication.”

The Networking Days 2025 was the fourth Bühler Group Networking Days event. The Swiss-based technology group has convened leaders from the industries it serves once every three years since 2016. Attendees at this year’s event traveled from 90 countries and six continents.

Sustainability: a business imperative

Throughout the event, speakers emphasized that sustainability is not just a responsibility – it’s a driver of resilience and competitiveness. Professor Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute and architect of the Planetary Boundaries framework, noted: “We must think of sustainability as central to competitiveness, security, stability, and health. When a decision improves your performance, attracts talent, opens new markets, or enhances resilience, communicate that clearly: show that sustainability is not a burden – it’s a competitive advantage.”

Bühler reported significant progress on its 2019 pledge to reduce energy, waste, and water in key value chains by 50% by 2025. Backed by nearly CHF 500 million in R&D investment, the company is delivering solutions that enable customers to reduce environmental footprint while boosting profitability. In some value chains, such as chocolate and aluminum, combined savings potential now exceeds 70%.

From digital process control to machine refurbishment and predictive maintenance, Bühler’s solutions offer practical paths toward more efficient, circular production systems that deliver measurable impact.

Driving transformation through circularity and innovation

Several sessions focused on how rethinking business models can unlock new value. Italian producer Andriani shared how circularity initiatives, supported by Bühler, enabled the company to turn side-streams into new product lines – from pet food to nutritional supplements. Similarly, illycaffè is now repurposing coffee byproducts for use in cosmetics and advancing regenerative practices with its growers.

IMD Professor Julia Binder encouraged businesses to approach circularity as a strategy for growth: “The circular economy is an ecosystem play – it’s very customer-centric, it’s extremely collaborative. The companies that really make money in the future will be those that use the license to innovate. I encourage you to start from the future back: envision one or two transformational innovations that could redefine your business, then define the steps you need to take to get there.”

Safe, healthy, affordable food that tastes good

A key discussion centered on the challenge of delivering nutritious, affordable, and appealing food to a growing global population. Mars Chief Science Officer Abigail Stevenson highlighted the rising importance of nutrient density, with more whole grains, legumes, and nuts appearing in packaged foods. She also emphasized the need for cross-sector collaboration: “Looking beyond our industry is critical for broadening perspectives and for really thinking differently.”

Florian Schattenmann, CTO at Cargill, underlined the complexity of balancing priorities: “Products need to offer the right taste, the right nutrition profile, the right sustainability profile, and the right cost – and of those, taste is king.”

The conversation also turned to building food systems in underserved regions. Naval Group CEO Simon Tecleab outlined his company’s journey in expanding food processing infrastructure across East Africa and building a new food park in Angola in partnership with Bühler. Mandla Nkomo, CEO of Partners in Food Solutions, stressed the importance of inclusive innovation: “Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity isn’t. Let’s build an opportunity superhighway, one factory at a time.”

Education, leadership, and bold decisions

The event concluded with a powerful reminder: technology alone is not enough. As Ranjay Gulati of Harvard Business School put it, “The currency to survive in an era of uncertainty is courage.” Guests were urged to act boldly, invest in leadership, and accelerate implementation of proven solutions.

CEO Stefan Scheiber closed the event by urging attendees to act boldly: “We need the courage to take decisive action – action that accelerates growth and drives the sustainable transformation of businesses, value chains, and entire industries. By doing this, we will shape a better future for our businesses and our societies, and truly multiply impact together.”

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