DESAFIA FOODTECH NETHERLANDS 2022

June 13 2022 - June 24 2022

Dec 20 2021

Spanish FoodTech Startups Join One of the Leading Ecosystems of Food Science at Wageningen University

A few months ago, six Spanish FoodTech startups joined Desaﬁa FoodTech Netherlands 2021 - a program organized by ICEX and Unknown Group - to scale their solutions to The Netherlands.

The two weeks program, which started at the end of November, brought together Dutch industry leaders, and introduced the participating startups to the Dutch market through three in-depth workshops and visits to multiple FoodTech hotspots such as Wageningen.

Wageningen Campus

Wageningen University is widely known as the best agricultural research institution,and is one of the leading institutions in Food science as well. The startups spent an entire day on Wageningen Campus to dive deeper into its FoodTech innovation center.

StartLife

They met Jan Meiling, the managing director of StartLife, a startup support company based on campus which focuses on sustainable AgriFood projects. Given his vast experience working with startups, Jan presented the biggest challenges at the moment and how to tackle them.

FoodValley

Later that day, the startups were introduced to FoodValley - the Dutch food independent platform for innovation and transition of food. FoodValley acts as an international ecosystem aggregating all the organizations involved in the food transition. The Spanish startups showed great interest to join FoodValley’s Protein Cluster, an international network connecting plant-protein start-ups and corporations worldwide.

Unilever & Open innovation

The Spanish startups also met Jos Tissen, Food Category Open innovation Director at Unilever. Jos gave many insights on how startups can collaborate with industry leaders such as Unilever, the timeline involved and what kind of solutions they are looking for at the moment.

Testimony of a successful FoodTech startup

Eugene Wang is the CEO and co-founder of Sophie’s Bionutrients, a FoodTech company specialized in microalgae to develop 100% plant-based & sustainable alternative protein for the food industry. Eugene joined to share his startup’s internationalization learnings with the Spanish startups as the company was initially founded in Singapore and now also has an o ce in The Netherlands.

Pitch training

Finally, the Spanishstartups participated in a pitch training given by Unknown Group’s COO, Jurgen Nieuwenhuijsen. This training aimed at preparing them for upcoming meetings with potential partners. It followed the setup of the Get In the Ring pitch battles, Unknown Group’s international startups competition, where startups pitch against each other for several rounds while answering questions at a fast pace. A ﬁerce pitch battle in the ring between Vegetaleso and FeltWood ended up with a tie!