UPCycled4Food initiative launched to make upcycled food products and ingredients the ‘new normal’

On June 18, Foodvalley launched the Upcycled4Food Initiative during the international “Towards Halving Food waste in Europe” conference. Together with a group of frontrunners from across the value chain in the agrifood sector, the ambition was expressed to start making upcycled food products and ingredients the ‘new normal’ for producers, supermarkets and food service players in their product development, purchasing and sales processes.

This initiative grew out of the Position Paper “Upcycled Food and Ingredients” published June 18 on the Foodvalley website. Nearly 50 parties from Foodvalley’s Upcycling Community, along with experts from various sectors collaborated closely on this publication.

Upcycled4Food Initiative
The Position Paper provides a firm foundation for future follow-up actions to make upcycled food products and ingredients the new normal. The first immediate step is to launch the Upcycled4Food initiative to improve sales opportunities.Companies that share the ambition of this initiative are therefore cordially invited to sign up to this start-up initiative of collaborating parties and register with Foodvalley via the contact form.

Promoting a sustainable future
As a practice leader, Foodvalley plays an essential facilitating and promoting role in the transition from a linear to circular agrifood system. Jolijn Zwart-van Kessel, innovation lead at Foodvalley explains: “By reusing unavoidable side streams from the agrifood chain in food and ingredients, there is simply less need to produce food, thereby reducing the pressure on climate and natural resources. Although much can already be done in terms of the technology, much is still needed to increase both the supply and demand of upcycled food and ingredients. We are therefore incredibly proud that together with a group of enthusiastic partners we are now turning the ambition we described in the Position Paper into concrete actions within our UPcycled4Food initiative. We invite more partners to sign up to grow this movement towards ‘Upcycling the new normal’.”

Nicole Timmerman, Business Developer Circular Duynie Group: At Duynie, our vision is to enable a circular agrifood system, where resources are used to their maximum potential. How? By upcycling side streams from the food, beverage, and biofuel industries to their highest and best use. Upcycling side streams from the food industry back into food perfectly fits our circular vision. A great example of how we are implementing this is the recent certification of our current pet food factory in Cuijk to ‘food grade’ status.”

Quirine de Weerd, Head of Corporate Affairs Lidl Nederland: “At Lidl, we want all our food produced with care to reach consumers. With our ‘Waste-me-not’ line, we make high-quality products from residual streams from our chain. By working together with suppliers, we save food and make upcycled products the new norm. We expect that the UPcycled4Food initiative will contribute to finding new partners to develop upcycled food products and expand our retail offerings in the future.”

For more information:
Foodvalley
www.foodvalley.nl