Nomad Foods, the owner of brands such as Birds Eye, Findus, and Aunt Bessie’s, has partnered with innovation network Innoget to launch an ‘Open Innovation Portal’ that invites academics, subject experts, start-ups and SMEs to share new solutions that could be scaled to help shape the future of food and support more sustainable diets.
The goal of the Nomad Foods Open Innovation Portal will be to develop new partnerships spanning from the idea phase through to product development and eventually, launch to market. Activities will include co-developing product solutions, consumer testing, facility testing and funding or building new ecosystems, focused initially on four key areas:
- Scalability of frozen mussels and other bivalve products
- Recyclability solutions for products that are currently in multi-material, non-recyclable vacuum packaging
- Solutions to enable recyclable paper-based meal trays or bowl packaging to be used for frozen foods
- Clean label replacements that replicate the functional properties of methylcellulose in food applications
Stéfan Descheemaeker, Chief Executive of Nomad Foods, commented: “Consumer demand for nutritious, high-quality, sustainable food and sustainable packaging solutions is growing and the role of technology in delivering these needs is accelerating. We are very fortunate to have a world-class in-house R&D team and a growing number of partnerships in the food tech space including our cell-cultured fish collaboration with BlueNalu. Our new Open Innovation Portal will help us to unlock the potential we see in important areas such as alternative protein as we play our part in helping to deliver a more sustainable food system and bring to life our purpose of Serving the World with Better Food.”
Dr Stella Peace, Chief Research & Development and Quality Officer, Nomad Foods, added: “We believe that great innovation goes together with collaboration and the scale of the challenges facing the food industry today will require partnership if we are to meet evolving consumer needs and our ambitious environmental commitments. As the clear category leader, we are proud to be working on new innovations that consumers will love and that could help to resolve some of the key challenges facing the food industry today.”
