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ALDI SUISSE’s Jérôme Meyer on partnerships, packaging and plant-based products
Jérôme Meyer is the Country Managing Director of ALDI SUISSE AG, which became the first Swiss retailer to join the Valley last year. We sat down with the self-proclaimed ALDI-Kind to talk about ecosystem partnerships and projects, tackling packaging waste and growing...
Valley After Hours at Nestlé’s R+D Accelerator brings SFNV partners together to connect and collaborate
Last week, we held our second Valley After Hours event at The Accelerator, powered by Nestlé Research & Development. The energising session provided the perfect opportunity for Valley partners to network, connect and explore synergies. This edition invited...
Alwin Kopse shares how the Federal Office for Agriculture is driving food system transformation
Alwin Kopse is Head of the International Affairs and Food Systems Unit at the Federal Office for Agriculture - and also happens to be a big believer in the power of multi-stakeholder collaboration. We sat down with Alwin to talk about why Switzerland is already seen...
A woman’s place is in the (Swiss) food innovation ecosystem
A woman’s place is in the kitchen? Today, it’s most definitely in the food innovation ecosystem! But if you’ve just recently qualified or you’re considering a career change, it can be hard to know how to get started. So for International Women’s Day, we've...
Foodetective announces appointment of Coca Cola HBC executive Maté Varga as Chief Strategy Officer
Swiss based commerce infrastructure platform Foodetective has announced the appointment of Mate Carga as its new Chief Strategy Officer. In his previous role, Maté served as Digital & Technology Platform Director, and has a noteworthy career of 20 years across...
Meet the two sisters who turned to entrepreneurship to tackle our food system challenges
Growing up, sisters Nadia and Sophie Hanessian didn’t know they would end up founding and jointly running a smart food startup. But they did already share a common outlook on the world – one based on sustainability, social justice and a commitment to tackling key...
Nestlé and EPFL collaborate on biobased food packaging with Project BIOPACK
In our first Co-create & Innovate case study, we find out more about Project BIOPACK – a collaborative partnership between EPFL’s Laboratory for Processing of Advanced Composites and Nestlé Research. The challenge Rethinking the way that packaging materials are...
Swiss startup Mirai Foods produces first cultivated tender steak
In a significant breakthrough for cultivated premium beef steaks, Swiss startup Mirai Foods has announced a technological leap forward in its cultivation of thick tender steaks. The Zurich-based company has developed what it calls “Fibration Technology” that allows...
Two new partnerships expand CleanGreens’ presence in the European and Middle Eastern markets
Founded in 2013, CleanGreens spent its first six years designing, developing and polishing its aeroponic growing system at the company’s headquarters in Molondin, Canton de Vaud, Switzerland. 2019 saw the installation of their first commercial system in France - and...
5 questions for Professor Véronique Michaud
Prof. Véronique Michaud heads up the Laboratory for Processing of Advanced Composites (LPAC) and is the Associate Dean of Engineering for Education at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. The team has recently been exploring use of novel...
Two industry leaders join YASAI’s Board as the team prepares to scale
Valley partner YASAI, a Swiss vertical farming start-up, has welcomed two industry leaders to its Board of Directors - Lorenz Wyss, CEO of the Bell Food Group, and Theo Stolze, former shareholder of the Stolze Group. The company now plans to draw on Mr. Wyss’s retail...
Insolight secures CHF 4.85 million to accelerate their commercial roll-out.
Two new investors will join Insolight on their journey to scale up the deployment of insolagrin, their innovative agrivoltaic solution. The team will now set-up large-scale installations in Switzerland and France before expanding internationally and increasing the...
ADM receives Business Sustainability Award for work to expand regenerative agriculture
ADM has won the Environmental Initiatives category of the 2022 SEAL Business Sustainability Awards for expanding its regenerative agriculture programs. Granted by a judging panel of renowned environmental and energy industry experts, the award recognizes programs or...
Stefan Palzer on working together to find viable solutions for sustainable and affordable nutrition
Stefan Palzer, Nestlé’s CTO, Head of Innovation, Technology and R&D, & Executive Vice President and the Valley’s Steering Committee Vice President is passionate about science, technology, and the role that innovation plays in making diets tastier, more...
Planted invests in scaling the Swiss alt protein supply chain following key Federal Council decision
Swiss FoodTech startup Planted, known for its clean-label meat made from alternative proteins, is rounding out 2022 with a landmark shift in the way it acquires its raw materials: the company is now procuring its protein-rich yellow peas from within Switzerland. This...
The Beelong Eco-score lands in Coop
Lausanne company Beelong has made it easier than ever for shoppers to make informed and environmentally sound decisions about the foods they buy. Their system, run by 15 staff members, has already analysed more than 150,000 food products and categorised them based on...
New meat alternative made from brewer’s grains will be produced in Switzerland
Circular Food Solutions Switzerland AG and the Doppelleu Boxer AG brewery will turn a brewing industry byproduct into next generation meat alternatives using Swiss raw materials. With a total investment of over five million Swiss francs, the Chopfab brewery site is...
How Haelixa is using DNA markers to power transparency across the food supply chain
The seeds of sustainability startup Haelixa were first sown when its co-founders Gediminas Mikutas and Michela Puddu, connected over their shared passion for making the value chain more open and accountable. From fabrics to food, Haelixa is committed to ensuring...
Foodetective raises $5.5 million in seed funding round
Valley Partner Foodetective, a tech-enabled hospitality startup, has raised $5.5 million (CHF 5.25 million) in a seed round led by Prediction Capital. The team is now building its most sought-after feature, ‘Intelligence’, which will push smart notifications &...
Mirai Foods collaborates with Rügenwalder Mühle to develop a hybrid product
Mirai Foods, the Swiss cultivated meat startup from Zurich, has partnered with Rügenwalder Mühle, the sustainability pioneer and meat alternatives market leader in Germany, to develop a hybrid product. Rügenwalder Mühle plans to build on their positioning as an...
Fruitful closes pre-seed round to develop software that helps vertical farms speak plant
Valley member Fruitful Farming AG, a Swiss startup developing optimization software for greenhouses and vertical farms, has secured CHF 500,000 in its pre-seed round. The team now plans to accelerate the development and distribution of its AI-based decision-making...
Givaudan teams up with Berkeley to publish new research on the future of alternative proteins
Givaudan has launched its latest white paper entitled ‘The Protein Horizon: the landscape of alternative protein technologies enabling future food experiences,’ its fourth collaboration with the University of Berkeley, California. This paper provides cutting-edge...
EHL President Carole Ackermann joins the SFNV Steering Committee
As President of the EHL Foundation and Holding and CEO & Co-Founder Diamondscull - a company that invests in tech startups - Carole will bring unique insight into the fields of innovation, investment and academia. We recently took the opportunity to sit down with...
Food waste in Switzerland: 5 questions for Claudio Beretta
Today, around one third of all food produced for human consumption is thrown away. That's about 2.8 million tons per year for the whole of Switzerland, and contributes to emissions and climate change. Claudio Beretta, scientific assistant for sustainability and food...
Why an ETHZ researcher founded a startup to tackle waste in the olive oil industry
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...
How this end-to-end innovation platform is helping to close the data gap on nutrition status in children and adolescents in Switzerland.
With Serge Rezzi at the helm, the former Swiss Vitamin Institute has transformed into the Swiss Nutrition and Health foundation - a foundation of public utility owning an end-to-end innovation platform in the field of nutrients and health. We sat down with Serge to...
Switzerland’s got talent: Meet Prof. Ardemis Boghossian from EPFL’s Nanobiotechnology lab
Nanobiotechnology and food science - what's the connection? Prof. Ardemis Boghossian and her team at EPFL have brought these two fields together to develop intelligent packaging technologies that tackle food waste while keeping consumers safe.How does your work shape...
How a climate-friendly sandwich is giving consumers a taste of our culinary future
Food2050’s Christian Kramer is using his unique sustainability system to raise awareness of the environmental impact of our meals. But he’s not stopping there. He’s also using what he’s learnt to develop 1.5 degree recipes. Shroomy is his first innovation - a...
Nestlé explores emerging technologies for animal-free dairy proteins
Nestlé has announced that it is exploring emerging technologies for the development of animal-free dairy protein-based products. Its novel product - developed by Nestlé R&D teams in Switzerland - will be piloted in the US market later this year as a...
Ice cream innovation from Geneva-based startup Konoï
Genevan company Konoï creates fresh frozen ice cream treats made from Cannabis sativa seeds. Their innovative process aims to reintroduce hemp - the "Royal Seed" - into Swiss diets. Konoi's products are more than "just" ice cream. In addition to their gourmet flavors,...
Cultivated Biosciences raises $1.5M pre-seed to tackle fats and mouthfeel
Cultivated Biosciences, an innovative ingredient company founded by Swiss entrepreneurs Tomas Turner and Dimitri Zogg, has just raised a $1.5M pre-seed round. The funding will enable the growing team to further optimize its production processes, research food...
Planted Closes Series B Financing Round of CHF 70 Million
Swiss Foodtech startup Planted, known for its clean-label biostructured meat, successfully closed its series B financing round of CHF 70 million. The round was led by L Catterton, the largest global consumer-focused private equity firm. Planted will use the funds to...
Unilever’s Swiss production site will become a new hub for scaling up nutrition innovation
The “Knorri” factory in Thayngen will be transformed into a unique innovation campus that will promote collaboration between startups and established companies, universities, investors, and innovation facilitators - helping new agrifood technologies to scale up and...
Nestlé launches new Youth Entrepreneurship Platform
As part of its Global Youth Initiative, Nestlé recently launched the Nestlé Youth Entrepreneurship Platform (YEP), a new digital platform for young innovators and entrepreneurs who want to learn new knowledge and skills, test an idea or grow their businesses, in areas...
Time to grow: YASAI’s crowd-invested funding round gets off to a strong start.
Growing up as a company is normally meant metaphorically, as startups move from young entrants to more mature businesses. But for YASAI, growing up also has a literal meaning. The Swiss agtech startup is redesigning the way food systems work by integrating vertical...
MIRAI FOODS and Shiok Meats enter into a strategic partnership agreement
MIRAI FOODS - a Swiss company at the forefront of cultivated meat production - has entered into a strategic partnership agreement to develop cultivated beef production in Singapore and accelerate regulatory approval. MIRAI FOODS has entered into a partnership...
ALDI SUISSE becomes the first Swiss retailer to join Swiss Food & Nutrition Valley
ALDI SUISSE is the first Swiss retailer to become a member of the Swiss Food & Nutrition Valley. By taking this step, ALDI strengthens its commitment to innovating to drive a more sustainable food system.A new partnership for even more sustainable innovation ALDI...
This Swiss startup’s AI-powered solution is leveraging data to improve how we farm.
Patrick Albrecht will be the first to tell you that he doesn’t have green fingers. But his team’s AI-driven software uses thousands of data points to optimize growth conditions - saving time and reducing the energy and resources needed to produce great quality...
CleanGreens Solutions is gearing up to bring their mobile irrigation robot to new markets
Having grown up on a farm, Bernhard Baumgartner, Commercial Director at aeroponic growing system manufacturer CleanGreens Solutions, grew up surrounded by plants. Now he’s helping colleagues across the globe - from Europe to the Middle East - grow a feast of leafy...
Switzerland’s got talent: Meet Prof. Josie Hughes from CREATE Lab at EPFL
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...
Why SFNV’s President Martin Vetterli is quietly confident about the future of food
Martin Vetterli was unanimously voted in for another term as SFNV President at SFNV's General Assembly in May. We sat down with Martin to talk science, vegetables and why he is quietly confident about the future of food.What does sustainable food mean to you...
How two lifelong friends are redesigning the beekeeper economy
When Alex and Giangio started making honey in their spare time, they had no idea it would eventually lead to them founding a bee-focused startup. Inspired by nature, PrimalBee® is disrupting a product that has barely seen innovation in 170 years: the beehive. Now...
Potiio Launches Crowdselling Campaign for Revolutionary Soft Drink Experience
Potiio’s unique water bottle technology and flavor capsules use brain science to revolutionize soft drink consumption. They’re now welcoming investors in their mission to create a circular beverage economy focused on wellness, convenience, and plastic reduction.The...
Nexenic raises 1.8 million for series production and market entry of portable mini-steamer Steasy®
The Swiss company Nexenic has developed a portable mini-steamer the size of a standard lunch box, and they’ve called it Steasy®. The product is soon to start serial production and enter the market. With a successful funding round to the tune of 1.8 million Swiss...
How FOOD2050 is enabling food service partners to reshape our food system, one meal at a time.
Back in 2019 Christian Kramer spotted an opportunity. Restaurants wanted to create more sustainable menus. Consumers wanted to make greener choices. And both were looking for support to help them in this process. This is exactly the gap that Christian’s new venture,...
Luya Foods launches its first products in over 130 Coop outlets
Back in 2021, a foodie, a food scientist and a chef led a successful crowdfunding campaign - and Luya was born. The Swiss startup transforms Okara - or soy pulp - into juicy plant-based alternatives. As of May 30 their products are available in over 130 Coop outlets...
SFNV launches a new Impact Platform on Food Systems 4.0
On June 9, food innovators from around the globe came together to explore the opportunities and challenges around Food Systems 4.0. SFNV is now inviting members to submit collaborative project proposals to spearhead purpose-driven innovation in the smart food era.Food...
How iSense is mapping taste just like Google mapped the Earth
Up until now, flavors have been functional black boxes. But Mathieu Asté, Founder and CEO of iSense, is eager to disrupt this 120-year old, $14 billion industry. His solution standardizes flavor taste measurement to enable comparison and provides a software (SaaS) to...
SFNV takes a deep dive into the world of cultured meat
This week, as part of our Impact Platform on sustainable proteins, we brought together three expert speakers to take a closer look at the topic of cultured meat. Watch the replay or check out our 60-second takeaways below. New solutions to our protein problem We’ve...
Firmenich and DSM join forces to accelerate taste and nutrition innovation
SFNV member Firmenich and DSM will merge, leveraging their respective world-class science and complementary capabilities in taste, texture and nutrition. The merger would allow the new company to anticipate evolving consumer needs and boost innovation in high-growth...