What happened at Future Food-Tech London?

Future Food-Tech 2019 welcomed over 400 delegates from 38 countries to discuss the latest trends, innovations and opportunities in food-tech. Our unique audience of 71% C-level delegates and over 100 start-ups all took part in deep-dive discussion, debate and over 1,200 meetings. Collaboration was very much at the heart of the summit.

In our main auditorium, 84 speakers took to the stage to share their ground-breaking ideas to map out the future and challenge the status quo, and a plethora of companies showcased their solutions and services in our exhibition space. Overall, it was the most impactful and interactive London event yet – echoing the pace at which this sector has been growing over the last year.

Here are just some of the global players and industry leaders who joined us at Future Food-Tech London, October 17-18, 2019.

In the media

Featured articles with interviews from speakers at the summit included articles in Bloomberg, Food Ingredients First and Just Food:

Key Takeaways

Speaker: Niccolo Manzoni, Founding Partner, FIVE SEASONS VENTURES

Five Seasons Ventures launched The State of European Food Tech at the summit and presented a ‘Deep Dive: The State of European Food-Tech in 2019‘ at Future Food-Tech.

The report covers:

Capital invested in food-tech in Europe since 2013

Corporates’ investment in food-tech and consolidation in the food delivery sector

Recent exits and IPOs, most active investors in Europe and their portfolios

Deep-dives: Direct-to-consumer and alternative proteins

Exclusive interviews with Foodspring, Ynsect, Butternut Box and Cortilia.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

How Are Consumption Habits Changing Our Food System?

“Our lives are getting more urban day by day and this will continue. This is true whether we look at develop or developing countries. As such the crash for time and the lack of culinary skills will see an ever increasing shift towards snacking and consumption of prepared foods. Meanwhile, the retailers are not standing still, and in this environment they are gauging how these shifts are happening “live” by opening “observation outlets” dedicated to start-ups that go beyond the traditional retail spaces typically granted to the larger FMCGs. As a consequence the bulk of the established FMCG sector is being forced to update and shift its offering. Experimentation continues, and only time will tell the winners.” Victoria Spadaro-Grant

Speakers:
Milena Lazarevska, Head of Future Brands & Investing, SAINSBURY’S, UK
Geoff Bryant, VP R&D, QUORN FOODS
Gil Horsky, Director of Innovation SnackFutures, MONDELEZ INTERNATIONAL
Jonathan Webster, VP Global Growth Strategy, THE KELLOGG COMPANY

Session Chair: Victoria Spadaro-Grant, CTO, BARILLA and CEO & President, BLU1877

Session Chair: Arnold Bos, Senior Consultant, LUX RESEARCH
Speakers:
Rob Beudeker, Senior Investment Director, DSM VENTURING
Gil Blander, Founder & CSO, INSIDETRACKER
Dmitry Alexeev, Head of Microbiome Research, ATLAS BIOMED
Juha Villanen, Business Development Manager EMEA, GARMIN HEALTH

Personalised Nutrition: In Science and Adoption, Have We Reached a Tipping Point?

“Personalised nutrition comes in different levels of cost (both in money and invasiveness). For serious health issues, you need genetics, blood biomarkers, microbiome, to be effective. But for more general healthy eating advice, wearables information such as resting heart rate or sleep patterns, combined with questionnaires, already allows for valuable advice.

Personalised nutrition allows ingredient companies to get closer to the consumer, and can use the data to better tailor the product portfolio. The question here is how much of that consumer data a company can actually use, under the European GDBR privacy regulations. So openness is important.

For the average consumer looking to eat healthier, personalised nutrition apps can 1) help to know what healthier options are for you, and 2) give crucially needed gratification within days or weeks, rather than years, by showing key biomarkers are moving in the right direction.

With so much focus in the market place on indulgent foods, it is difficult for average consumers to know what healthier options for them are. Personalised nutrition gives food companies the means to share in that responsibility to help consumers make healthier choices. Personalised nutrition does need to be based on solid scientific evidence, and needs to communicate this to the user, for them have trust in the recommendations and to remove doubts that it is merely a marketing ploy.” Arnold Bos

Our Gut Feeling: The Link Between Microbiome and the Brain

“A highlight from the panel discussion was the potential of Microbiome science to bring innovative, potentially disruptive, therapies to mental health patients.

Synergies, rather than competition, between Pharma/biotech and nutrition solutions will be the best way forward. We also emphasised the power of rigorous, evidence-based claims, for both industries, to ensure important returns for companies and investors.” Stefan Catsicas

Session Chair:
Stefan Catsicas, Former CTO, NESTLE, & Founding Partner, SKYVIEWS LIFE SCIENCE
Speakers:
Isabelle De Cremoux, CEO, SEVENTURE PARTNERS
Martha Carlin, CEO, THE BIOCOLLECTIVE
Philip Strandwitz, Co-Founder & CEO, HOLOBIOME

Session Chair: Stefan Catsicas, Former CTO, NESTLE, & Founding Partner, SKYVIEWS LIFE SCIENCE

Session Chair: Costa Yiannoulis, CIO, CPT CAPITAL

Overcoming Obstacles to Scale Cellular Agriculture

“Cultivated meat is no longer about proof of concept, its now about proof of scale. We are now seeing start-ups emerging to focus on individual parts of the cultivated meat value chain (e.g. media formulation, equipment/engineering etc) vs a few years ago when all the start-ups were trying to do everything across the value chain given the nascency of the industry.
The current cohort of cultivated meat start-ups is quite collaborative on issues like regulatory pathway and consumer marketing/messaging vs startups in other areas of food tech. Given the completely new regulation and messaging that needs to be worked out in this vertical, it is encouraging to see them joining up to carve the way forward as an industry. We are 3-5 years away from cultivated meat in restaurants and 5-10 years away from having it available in supermarkets.” Costa Yiannoulis

Speakers:
Peter Verstrate, COO, MOSA MEAT
Lou Cooperhouse, CEO & Founder, BLUENALU
John Carrigan, Chief Scientific Advisor, REBELBIO
Ido Savir, Co-Founder & CEO, SUPERMEAT

New Models for Value-Driven Innovation in Big Corporates

“For successful start-up – corporates collaborations, the following things should happen:
– Top management buy in and backup that flows all the way down to the level working with the start-up
– Clear definitions of successful partnership with roles and responsibilities in advance
– The employees taking risks and working with new technologies should be acknowledged
– Corporates may innovate while creating internal programmes with knowledge sharing and rewards for innovators” Jonathan Berger

Speakers:
Gerardo Mazzeo, Global Innovation Director, NESTLE
Egon Barbosa, EMEA Innovation Marketing Director, COCA-COLA
Neil Foster, Head of Strategic Partnerships, NURITAS
Andy Zynga, CEO, EIT FOOD
Monika Lessl, VP, Head of Corporate Innovation and R&D, BAYER AG

Session Chair: Jonathan Berger, CEO, THE KITCHEN FOODTECH HUB

Technology Showcase Presentations and TechHub

The future of food is much more than just plant based, this year’s London conference further bridged the gap between today’s leaders and tomorrow’s innovators. Stand-outs both on-stage and off were Amazentis, who are using advanced nutrition to reverse age related muscle decline, IXON Food Technology who are looking to eliminate cold chain storage with their shelf stable advanced aseptic packaging and, Legendairy Foods who are developing Europe’s first ‘clean dairy’ products without the use of animals through fermentation.

Start-ups are the key to innovation and are fundamental in accelerating the advancement of new game changing technologies and solutions which are featured at Future Food-Tech.

Interested in showcasing your breakthrough solution at a future summit? Contact Jet Luckhurst to find out more.

Roundtable Discussion Groups

From Tech to Food-Tech: What are the similarities and differences in starting, growing, and scaling a food-tech business versus your typical tech start-up?

We need easy access to pre-seed and seed funding for food-tech. It is just as easy or easier than software or apps.

Valley of death potential around series B/C. You have to prove and do a lot more than a software business: R&D, scale-up, formulation, IP, regulatory pathways, which is all extremely capital intense.

There is a very big difference around regulation, food safety and level of responsibility

Host: Ela Madej, Co-founder & Partner, FIFTY YEARS

Open Innovation: How can you leverage open innovation to collaborate with external partners for maximum impact?

Consider taking open innovation out of the main team, and deploy another team focused on just that. This drives focus and gets results.

Take that first small step with a start-up to get things moving. The first step is often the most important one to build momentum, otherwise nothing happens.

Consider delaying NDAs until really needed, have a talk first and go as far as you can go in this manner.

Host: Imran Afzal, Senior R&D Manager, PepsiCo Technology Ventures, External Innovation, PEPSICO

Ingredient Innovation: What novel ingredients and technologies are food brands utilising to cater for the demand in natural products?

The definition of natural is terribly confusing, and regulators complicate it even more.

There were predictions that consumers will want more fibre, still seek a complete sugar substitute, are concerned with gut health and probably don’t want more protein.

Making claims around functional ingredients are tough; everyone is a bit confused as to how to gain an advantage.

Host: Nick Rosa, Managing Partner, CULTIVIAN SANDBOX VENTURES

Food Delivery: What partnerships are food delivery companies looking for in order to meet customer expectations, and differentiate their offering?

The roundtable was fun, we spoke a lot about the future of grocery as there were some people representing large grocers and how we think technology will change consumer habits. In general, people didn’t think eating would change that much in terms of frequency and what meals looked like but more in how we source our food. Hope that helps!

Host: Leah Raber, Head of Business Development EMEA, UBER EATS

Morten Toft Bech, Founder, THE MEATLESS FARM CO., UK