The leading event to discover the latest developments in the food and beverage industry, every year the World Food Innovation Awards welcomes some of the most innovative new ideas and concepts. Sponsored by Tetra Pak and organised in association with the IFE, this year’s event showed once again how forward-thinking companies make the corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability an indispensable part of their business operations with the brilliant array of entries in the waste saving and CSR categories.
Best waste saving initiative
Waste saving continues to be a top priority for consumers and companies alike in today’s marketplace. Seeing the need to highlight efforts in this field, the World Food Innovation Awards introduced a brand new category this year to award the best waste saving initiatives of the year. W-Cycle was selected as the winner in the category with their Hotray, a unique product in the hot/ chilled ready meals market. The product is made from a renewable raw material – sugar cane fibres, a by-product of sugar production – and has 100% compostable/recyclable properties. Unlike the other pulp products in the market, the Hotray does not leak liquids and shows better performance compared to products made from existing materials. A finalist in the category, Yeo Valley’s apple and custard ‘Left-Yeovers’ yogurt was highly commended by the judges. Left-Yeovers is the result of a collaboration between Tesco and Yeo Valley, which has been going on for over a year now. The company uses the leftover fruit from the retailer’s stores to create recipes such as strawberry and fig, plum and custard, and banoffee. Not only preventing waste, these yogurts also support the redistribution of food by donating £0.10 from every pot sold to FareShare. So far over £20,000 has been raised and 18.3 million meals have been provided to help support vulnerable people. On a similar vein, Snact, a fruit jerky made from surplus fruit, joined the finalists with their compostable packaging. The social enterprise buys surplus fruits, which would otherwise be discarded for superficial imperfections, directly from British farmers and packagers at fair prices, and creates a healthy, dried blended fruit snack with a long shelf life. Their winning compostable packaging was introduced in 2016; it’s an innovative film that is suitable for home composters and behaves similarly to an orange peel, decomposing within eight months.
Best corporate social responsibility initiative
In the best social responsibility initiative category, the winner this year was Sacoma, with its unique business model that develops innovative snack and food products that use sweet potatoes grown by smallholder farms in Kenya. Targeting health-conscious and ethical consumers, the company sells the healthy snacks and gluten-free products developed by utilising food innovation and the Knowledge Transfer Partnership with UK universities, in the UK and the EU. The business pays market rate prices for the farmers’ raw material and provides the smallholders with training on international food standards, allowing them to build the capacity to trade in the international market and earn a sustainable income. Another finalist in the category, HCM Development AS’ Water for Life initiative aims to deliver near 500 million cubic metres of fresh water. The project plans to produce crops and fish in large scale aquapond systems and of course provide the region with drinking water. Finally, Hormel Foods’ Vital Cuisine range is recognised for offering a unique nutrition product specially designed for people experiencing a decrease in appetite, unintentional weight loss and a depletion of energy due to cancer treatment. Developed in collaboration with researchers in both the health and culinary fields to ensure a thorough understanding of a patient’s needs during various phases of treatment, the ready-to-serve meals feature seven high protein varieties including chicken and dumpling, sweet potato and lentil, and beef and mushroom gravy.
Set that trend
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