Weekly Roundup: Blockchain to bust food fraud, sugar-reduction tech targets fruit juices

07 Apr 2023 --- This week in industry news, Better Juice completed its pilot trials for reducing simple sugars in natural berry and other fruit juices, while Schouten Europe introduced its “revolutionary” plant-based egg white. Meanwhile, food fraud is being tackled with blockchain technology to ensure full traceability and transparency information is encoded into QR codes.

In brief: Business moves
Aleph Farms joined the UN’s Global Compact, a voluntary leadership platform for developing, implementing and disclosing responsible business practices. As a participant in the UN Global Compact, Aleph Farms will publish an annual Communication on Progress (COP) to demonstrate the company’s ongoing commitment to responsible business action supporting broader societal goals. 

Accenture, Microsoft and Unilever completed one of the largest and most complex cloud migrations in the consumer goods industry. The migration has helped Unilever become a cloud-only enterprise. It has helped ensure resilient, secure and optimized processes for Unilever and provides a platform to drive innovation and growth. With Azure as its primary cloud platform, Unilever will be able to accelerate product launches, enhance customer service and improve operational efficiency. 

Maxum Food released a global dairy commodity update, revealing that short-term fundamentals remain but should improve later in the year as global trade recovers and milk production slows. The largest dampener on the market remains the EU which provides the outlook with a double edge. The EU sector is sending signals that prolong weak commodity prices. While EU processors continue to Schouten Europe launched a plant-based egg white.encourage their farmers to produce more milk (even though prices are in decline), high retail dairy prices are prompting households to consume less dairy – directly as cheese and butterfat, but also in food categories that consume dairy ingredients. High inflation will linger through 2023 while rising interest rates will further damage spending.

The German Crespel & Deiters Group entered the US market with a newly founded subsidiary: Crespel & Deiters Food USA. The offer comprises a range of in-house produced non-GMO functional wheat-based ingredients and application-oriented manufacturing expertise from Loryma, the group’s food specialist. This way, they want to help manufacturers to respond to the increasing demand for sustainable plant-based products such as authentic meat alternatives. With the founding American subsidiary in Chicago, Illinois, the Crespel & Deiters Group is making its functional wheat-based ingredients available to industrial customers in North America. 

Israel-based food tech start-up Better Juice completed its series of pilot trials for reducing simple sugars in natural berry and other fruit juices. In partnership with GEA Group, Better Juice hosted several prominent forest fruit juice manufacturers from the EU, the US, Australia and Brazil to give their brands a sugar-reduction makeover using their sugar-reduction technology. The trials were conducted at the pilot unit established last year in GEA’s innovation center in Ahaus, Germany. During the trials, while preserving their characteristic flavors and textures, the team reduced the simple sugar content by 30% and 50% across forest fruit juices, including strawberry, cherry and blueberry.

UNISOT is attempting to combat fraud with its Digital Product Passports (DPP), which leverages blockchain technology to ensure full traceability and transparency information is encoded into QR codes on food, enabling manufacturers to prove their product’s provenance. DPPs will allow manufacturers and customers to view comprehensive product Information, such as raw materials, components, manufacturing locations, cold chain integrity, accreditation, certifications, and carbon footprints, to waste recycling, across the supply chain. The solution aims to relieve pressure on already strained food chains and revive consumer trust, which has been tested by greenwashing claims.

In brief: Sustainability highlights 
The Marine Conservation Society reviewed 186 environmental ratings for seafood, with 20 seafood ratings moving to the “Fish to Avoid” list and only 15 seafood ratings joining the green-rated “Best Choice” list with this season’s rating update. Northeast Atlantic mackerel has moved on to the amber list, having been on the charity’s green list since before 2011. Populations of mackerel in the past have been large enough to withstand fishing. However, in recent years, the population has been in steady decline. An amber rating means improvements are needed – in this case, better management to end overfishing the stock. Various states catch mackerel, including Norway, Iceland, the UK and the EU. 

In brief: Launches
Schouten Europe, a producer of plant-based meat and fish alternatives, launched its latest innovation: a plant-based egg white, which, according to the company, looks and tastes like animal chicken egg white. With increasing consumer demand for sustainable and ethical food options, Schouten has developed the unique plant-based egg white that offers the same nutritional benefits as real chicken egg protein without harming animals or the environment. The product is also suitable for people with egg allergies.TissenBioFarm participates in the Samsung Welstory TechUP+ program to accelerate the mass production of cultivated meat. (Photo: TissenBioFarm)

In brief: Other highlights
TissenBioFarm, a South Korean cultivated meat start-up, has been selected for the Samsung Welstory TechUP+ program. a foodservice and distribution arm of Samsung Group. TissenBioFarm is a food technology start-up that started from a tissue engineering lab of Postech, Korea’s top-tier research university. It has developed eco-friendly and high-quality cultivated meat using biotechnologies and engineering expertise. It has drawn attention by offering solutions that have overcome the industry’s technical limitations, such as mass production, whole-cut, meat texture and marbling. It has developed technology to mass-produce whole-cut cultivated meat with realistic marbles.

Around 1.23 billion people were employed in the world’s agri-food systems in 2019, and more than three times that figure, or almost half the world’s population, live in households linked to agri-food systems, according to new research by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Of these 1.23 billion people, 857 million worked in primary agricultural production, while 375 million worked in the off-farm segments of agri-food systems. The new figures, the first systematic and documented global estimate of its kind, derive from various sources and incorporate the widespread use of part-time or seasonal employment in the sector. The figures also refer to agri-food systems rather than agricultural sectors, reflecting the increasing importance of off-farm activities in feeding the world’s population, currently 8 billion and growing. 

By Elizabeth Green