‘14% of food products are lost along the way and do not reach the final consumer’

Oct 10, 2024

  • The new edition of the ‘Breakfast4inno’ of Agrotecnio and the Agrobiotech Park has dealt with the use of food waste in new useful resources for the market.
  • The case of success of the company Ingredalia, which transforms and commercialises the leftover parts of the vegetables, has been presented.

 

It is estimated that around 14% of food is lost and does not reach the final consumer, from the time it is harvested in the field until it reaches the retailer, due to various inefficiencies and shortcomings in the supply chain. In the case of vegetable crops, this percentage increases significantly, reaching 60% in the case of artichoke crops or 35% in broccoli. The company Ingredalia SL, located in Navarra and created in 2017, has been able to take advantage of this problem.

The company was born with the idea of recovering vegetable waste, taking advantage of by-products that do not reach the consumer and converting them back into raw materials that bring health to the end consumer. At the moment, they are working with broccoli, a superfood, from which they extract two precursors of sulforaphane a substance present in the vegetable that has great health benefits, as its director Miguel Ángel Cubero explained at the informative lunch organised today by the Agrobiotech Lleida Park and Agrotecnio.

Cubero explained that one of the products he markets with this substance is a supplement for horses, which ‘has great anti-inflammatory power, boosts the immune system and prevents pathologies such as diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease’. ‘The animals recover very quickly from a circuit after taking it,’ he said.

Fifty percent of the company’s current production is exported to the United States, although it also has a market in Europe. At the moment they only work with broccoli, but they are also experimenting with asparagus, artichokes and carrots.

Close collaboration with Agrotecnio and the UdL

Ingredalia works very closely with the University of Lleida and the group of Agrotechnology of New Technologies of Food Processing, to validate the clinical studies and to apply the research in a competitive way. As the professor Robert Soliva Fortuny has explained, they have worked closely to help them to transform these raw materials into final products. The director of Ingredalia has pointed out that ‘Agrotecnio and the UdL are one of the best research centres there are in the application of basic research, as they know how to transfer the research to the market’.

Professor Robert Soliva presented the work carried out by the Agrotechnology Research Group on New Food Processing Technologies and the Scientific-Technical Service for Food Processing Pilot Plant Testing at the University of Lleida to make the most of waste and by-products from the processing industry and develop new food products that meet the demands of consumers. ‘We work for the integral use of materials, trying not to generate waste, valorising this waste, studying physical treatments to make clean extractions, and above all we try to help incorporate research into the market, through the PCiTAL pilot plant’, Soliva summarised.

The PCiTAL pilot plant offers tests that can be used for tests, studies and experiments carried out by the UdL itself, or by other departments of the UdL, or for private companies seeking to obtain a commercial benefit. In both cases, it offers the possibility of studying the needs to develop complete food production processes.

Camelina, the subject of the next debate

The ‘Breakfast4Inno’ is a series of lunches designed to bring citizens closer to the world of research and promote the transfer of knowledge and technology between research centres and industry. The lunches aim to create a space for sharing knowledge, real-life experiences and challenges for both companies and research staff.

The next Breakfast4Inno will be held on 14 November and will focus on camelina, an alternative to cereal. Camelina is a drought-tolerant oil crop that is well adapted to Mediterranean climates. Products obtained from camelina have great industrial potential due to their high content of mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids.