Climate tech venture capital fund Icos Capital held ‘Accelerating Sustainability Food Systems Summit’ at Bühler’s Innovation Campus on 14 February. The event brought together start-ups from areas of decarbonisation, precision fermentation, cell culture and side stream valorisation; all aiming to accelerate the transition towards sustainable food systems.
Both Icos Capital and Bühler aim to grow their ‘ecosystem’ of collaboration and innovation to enable start-ups to scale up their efforts in tackling complex challenges in the food sector.
“Our goal at Icos Capital is to identify and invest in next-level innovations to accelerate sustainability. Our model of collaborative venturing brings start-ups specialised in sustainable food, circular economy, sustainable industry, and decarbonisation into win-win partnerships with corporates, supporting their growth,” explained Nityen Lal, General Partner at ICOS Capital, adding: “The event here at Bühler’s CUBIC Innovation Campus was everything we expected it to be: forward-thinking entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas to solve major problems, investors ready to identify the next start-up to push forward, and industry partners equipped with the know-how and technology to accelerate positive impact at scale.”
At the event, over 30 start-ups from across Europe, the UK and Israel pitched innovations and discussed collaborations with corporations.
Speaking of the event, Ian Roberts, CTO of Bühler, spoke of his ‘delight’ in bringing these start-ups and companies together: “We’re delighted to play a role in strengthening this collaborative venturing approach to scale impactful innovation.
“With established supply chains and market access, we believe that corporates in the room can play a crucial role in the journey of start-ups and enable them to scale both their business and their sustainable impact significantly faster.”
Icos and Bühler see technology levels increasing and positive changes in the market with regards to utilising sidestreams and precision fermentation especially. NapiFeryn, one of Icos’ portfolio companies, have developed a patented process to obtain rapeseed proteins from the sidestream of oil pressing.
This process of extracting a high value product from a low-cost raw material raised a lot of interest from companies in the room.
“We’re looking forward to taking our business to the next level with the right partnerships. This event is a unique opportunity to connect with companies that can offer know-how and technology to scale up our production,” said Dr. Magdalena Kozlowska, CEO and Founder at NapiFeryn.
The ‘Accelerating Sustainability Food Systems Summit’ was an early highlight for Icos 2023. Their search with Bühler for finding sustainable start-ups continues.
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