Claudio Reinhard set out to write his Master’s Thesis on soil regeneration in Tunisia. But after discovering a huge untapped opportunity in the olive oil industry, Claudio has transformed his findings into an award-winning collaborative research project and founded a startup to bring the developed solution to market. Now he’s looking for partners to scale his impact. 

Tell us a bit about yourself

Hello, I’m Claudio – a mechanical engineer and ETH Zurich Project Lead who’s passionate about circular economy and entrepreneurship.

What’s the story behind your research?

I’ve always been interested in the concept of biorefineries and biochar and soil health in particular. Back in 2015 I’d planned to write my Master’s Thesis on how to use biochar in soils in Tunisia. While searching for a suitable source of biomass, I came across the topic of olive side streams. 

I was surprised to discover that olive oil production is responsible for a huge amount of agricultural by-products. Only 20% of the olive fruit harvested is transformed into extra virgin olive oil. The remaining 80% pile up as massive amounts of a side stream known as olive pomace. If released uncontrolled to the environment, olive pomace can cause serious damage to soil and water bodies due to its phytotoxic and antimicrobial properties. 

Nowadays, olive pomace is mostly used for the extraction of residual low-quality oil (pomace oil) before the remaining biomass is burnt. But this is a huge loss of value. Olive pomace is very rich in valuable, natural substances, called antioxidants. Olive antioxidants are known for their tremendous health benefits and strong antioxidant potential. I recognized that there was a huge opportunity to transform this abundant and low-cost by-product into a wide range of value-added products. 

Eager to build upon the promising results of my Masters thesis, I teamed up with Prof. Laura Nyström from Laboratory of Food Biochemistry at ETH Zürich, to initiate the EIT Food project Phenoliva, which kicked off in October 2019.

Tell us a bit more about the Phenoliva project

The Phenoliva project is an EIT Food innovation project. It brings together partners from the food industry, research and academia to develop and implement an integrated waste management concept for the olive oil industry. 

Using a novel process, the project partners extract olive antioxidants from olive pomace, and process the resulting extract into an innovative antioxidant that can be used as a valuable natural additive in food and cosmetics. The process is circular and all by-products are recycled.

We were thrilled to win the EIT Food Impact Prize in the circular economy category last year and to be nominated for this year’s EIT Awards. This recognition keeps us motivated and moving forward!

So how are you taking the results of your project forward?

In 2021 Laura Nyström and I decided to found a company to commercialize our findings. Over the last few months I’ve teamed up with Enrico Tenaglia, a biomolecular scientist, and Samuel Bühlmann, a business and marketing specialist, to develop and implement a go-to market strategy. 

So far this year, we’ve been selected to take part in the Startlife accelerator in Wageningen and have travelled to Africa as part of the SASBI program to explore the potential of sidestream valorisation in the coffee industry. We have also made it into the MassChallenge Switzerland 2022 Accelerator as one of the top 100 start-ups in their Sustainable Food Solutions track. We’re very excited about what’s coming in the next few months! 

What are your next steps?

We’re now starting discussions with industry partners so that we can develop a network of potential customers. We’ll be initially focusing on the cosmetics industry – a sector that has already shown significant interest in our ingredients.

We’re also working alongside local partners to set up a production site in Andalusia to produce antioxidant extracts from olive pomace. This should be up and running in 2023.

How can other ecosystem actors get involved in your work?

Actors from the cosmetics, food, supplements or feed and pet food sector are very welcome to reach out to us to discuss how our product could be used in their product lines. 

In the last few months, we’ve received some requests from agribusinesses that are interested in applying our upcycling process to their own harvest and production waste. We’re now working closely with an almond farm in Portugal in order to help them transform thousands of tons of almond husks and shells into added-value products. If any businesses are interested in exploring how they could valorize their harvest or production waste, I’d love to connect. 

You can also tune in and watch me pitch the project at the EIT Awards semi-finals on September 29. If you like what you hear, you can vote for us from September 29 to October 11.

What advice do you have for other researchers who would like to transform their findings into practical projects or businesses?

Find advocates who believe in the potential of your project. Prof. Laura Nyström has been a supporter from the beginning and remains actively involved in Gaia Tech as an advisor. Her support and encouragement has made a huge difference! 

Find out more on the Gaia Tech website. 

About the Phenoliva project

The Phenoliva project is an EIT Food innovation project funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union. Funded with over €2M, the project started in October 2019 and ends at the end of 2022. The interdisciplinary Phenoliva consortium consists of eight partners from academia, applied research and food industry. Gaia Tech was founded to bring the project results to the market.

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Robotics and AI offer huge potential to drive innovation, from agriculture to sustainable consumption. EPFL’s CREATE Lab is eager to  collaborate with industry partners to change how we design and use robots. We caught up with Prof. Josie Hughes to find out more about the expertise that her team can offer.

How can your work at CREATE LAB support food system innovation?

Making food production more efficient, nutritious and environmentally conscious is a global problem. But robotics and AI can help us to innovate and think outside the box. In the CREATE lab, we don’t just want to scratch the surface. We want to deep dive into how the tools available to us can help us to fundamentally rethink the way food systems work.

This is not only about designing and creating more capable robots but also enabling robots to perform large-scale physical experiments to design or optimize processes such as food development or agricultural practices. The applications are limitless. Robots can automatically optimize or discover new recipes by helping us better understand human taste, optimize the growing conditions for certain plants or harvest plants in challenging terrain.

One of our PhD students is currently working on training harvesting robots to feel and see raspberries to reduce the amount of soft fruit loss during harvesting. You can see the machine in action in the video below.  

On a personal level, which issues would you be particularly interested in tackling?

The amount of waste that our food systems currently create really frustrates me. But this also seems to be an issue that both consumers and industry can tackle in the short term and could have a really significant impact if we get it right. As consumers we need to change our habits and accept blemished or non-perfect fresh food. Reusable packaging is also a hugely promising area. I believe that greater collaboration is important here. Over the last few months, we’ve been working on a really exciting project in this space. More news will follow soon!

How could SFNV members and the wider Swiss food ecosystem engage with the CREATE Lab? 

Reach out to my colleagues at the EPFL Integrative Food and Nutrition Center. The IFNC’s team acts as an interface between EPFL researchers and the outside world, mostly food industry players. Collaborations always start with a scientific question. Contact Christian Schwab, the Center’s Executive Director, to find out more. 

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