Last week we hosted at our FoodTech Innovation Hub in Barcelona the “Accelerating FoodTech Innovation from the Mediterranean” event, in partnership with KM ZERO Food Innovation Hub. It’s been a great opportunity to walk the talk of fostering collaboration and spreading our favorite African proverb “If You Want to Go Fast, Go Alone. If You Want to Go Far, Go Together”.

In less than two weeks since we decided to organize this event, we welcomed over 120 attendees from the Spanish FoodTech ecosystem including some of the most ambitious FoodTech entrepreneurs, corporate executives, investors, journalists, facilitating collaborations among them and working together to create a better food system. On top of being an astounding sharing and learning experience, we were able to enable hundreds of meaningful connections among all kinds of actors of the ecosystem!

Check out all the pictures of the event here

For the first time in history, we joined forces with KM Zero, to showcase the latest FoodTech innovation and foster the whole Spanish innovation ecosystem from our FoodTech Innovation hub in Barcelona. According to the latest ICEX report, the FoodTech sector in Spain has tripled its value in the last year, seeing an investment peak of €695 million in 2021 alone. Barcelona is clearly the hotspot of all these innovations as more than 120 AgriFoodTech companies are headquartered in the Catalan capital which has attracted more than 80% of all the funding raised historically, according to our latest investment figures from the FoodTech Data Navigator.

The event started with a brief introduction of our company and the 2021 FoodTech 500 introduced by Alessio D’Antino, our founder and CEO. He presented the latest edition of the FoodTech 500, the ‘Fortune 500’ of AgriFoodTech, and introduced the upcoming activities and events of our Barcelona FoodTech Innovation Hub.

Following the opening, Beatriz Jacoste, Director at KM ZERO Food Innovation Hub, announced their open innovation program. It will host 10 FoodTech startups accelerating the positive transformation of the food system by tackling its main challenges.

Kilian Zaragozá, CEO of Nadie Sin Su Ración Diaria, then took the floor to share and explain his project that digitizes the process of collecting and distributing food aid from start to finish.

Jumping to the main session, we kick-off our pitching session introducing seven selected FoodTech companies based in Spain with disruptive projects changing our food system including:

 

Nora Foods prepares healthy and sustainable ready-meals options for businesses, only  using seasonal ingredients. Find out more info here.

 

 

Current Foods creates plant-based alternatives for people’s seafood favorites. Find out more info here.

 

Rip Foods develops plant-based meat alternatives. Find out more info here.

 

 

Gloop offers edible straws and spoons: vegan and sustainable. An innovative substitute for single-use plastic straws and spoons. Find out more info here.

 

 

La Finesse is a producer and distributor of black winter truffles. Straight from Teruel, they work to offer the best fresh truffle experience. Find out more info here.

 

 

 

Origin creates a sustainable superfood, spirulina contributes to improving your health in a natural way with a high protein content (60%), vitamins and minerals. Find out more info here.

 

 

Personal Foods contributes to the improvement of health and wellbeing through the inclusion of probiotics and functional ingredients in some of the people’s favorite foods, with the differential of combining science with pleasure, trying to reach all segments of the population. Find out more info here.

 

Following the pitch session, we had a fantastic set of panelists including leading figures from the food sector in Spain, such as Rubén Hidalgo, Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at CAPSA FOOD; Laura Gil, Director of Digital Transformation at Damm; Cristian Ull, Founding Partner at Unitatea and Juan Ignacio Zaffora, Regional Startup Manager, CLC South EIT Food. They openly shared their experience working with startups, their latest open innovation projects and share their honest view about the opportunities and challenges around working with startups. Some of the topics covered included the level of maturity of the Spanish FoodTech ecosystem and the need for talent and diversity in the sector. 

We wrapped up the event with a Q&A session with Marc Coloma from Heura Foods, sharing a bit of the journey that led him to get into entrepreneurship, the challenges and opportunities of building a ‘challenger’ brand and the impact his company has been able to create so far. We then close off the night by opening up the floor to participants and asking them to briefly introduce themselves, to facilitate connections during the networking session.

We want to thank the whole KM ZERO Food Innovation Hub team for being our partner-in-crime for this event and to all speakers who took part in our panel discussion. In particular, we want to congratulate all entrepreneurs who pitched at the event. 

We know we still have a long road ahead of us and joining forces with like-minded organizations can help create a brighter future for our food system – for sure, the biggest takeaway from the event is in order to truly turn the Spanish FoodTech Ecosystem into a global hotspot of innovation, collaboration is playing and will continue to play a pivotal role to help the industry to embrace it as their competitive advantage 😉

Deep dive into key insights on various actors of the food tech Spanish scene. Download the report for free here! Are you a key player in the Spanish FoodTech ecosystem? Put yourself on the map today by adding your organization here.

Forward Fooding is the world’s first collaborative platform for FoodTech Data Intelligence and Corporate Startup Collaboration.