The latest news, trends, analysis, interviews and podcasts from the global food and beverage industry

Blendhub has incorporated a new partner into its service platform for the food industry, Upfood, a Danish fruit and vegetable upcycling specialist. Blendhub has a global platform business model offering a service portfolio named ‘Food-as-a-Service’ (FaaS) to develop and produce powder-based food and nutrition products directly for the end consumer, unserved communities or through industrial processes converted into liquid, solid or gelled ready-to-consume food products. The company offers its FaaS customers the opportunity to co-create shared value opportunities and turnkey food solutions with a global partner network, ranging from farmer associations and specialty ingredients suppliers to food formulators and technology providers. Led by entrepreneur Sajjad Haider, Upfood upcycles surplus fruit and vegetables into nutritious plant-based ingredients for the food industry. It has developed a novel fruit and vegetable dryer that is solar powered with a low production cost. The standard model has the capacity to dry 1Mt per day of fresh fruits and vegetables, however the dryer capacity can be scaled and customised, from 50 kg per day for small-holder farmers to 10Mt per day for industrial production. The dryer can be deployed at post-harvest level and in any production plant as a drying unit prior to processing into powder. According to Upfood, it utilises a CO2 neutral drying process to produce high quality dried products and has been tested in Almeria, Spain, by the Danish Technological Institute. In a statement announcing the partnership, Blendhub said Upfood’s technological solutions have low CAPEX and OPEX, are easy to implement and more sustainable than existing solutions, making them fully aligned with Blendhub’s own business model to produce more efficiently and sustainably. The collaboration incorporates Upfood as a strategic partner to Blendhub’s FaaS platform, which supports professionals and companies from start-ups and small to medium enterprises to large ingredients and food companies from ideation to market launch. Upfood and Blendhub’s partnership will help optimise the sourcing of plant-based raw materials for the development of new ingredients and innovative, affordable food products while fighting food waste.