An interview with Gisli Herjolfsson, Erlingur Brynjulfsson, Stefan Karlsson and Atli Thor Hannesson, the founders of Controlant, one of Forward Fooding’s top 500 Food Tech startups.

It’s time to put a face to the name…

We asked our FoodTech 500 top-runners to give us a bit of insight into how they started out as a company and their thoughts on the role of technology in Food innovation. Meet the team behind Controlant, an end-to-end cold chain monitoring solution to drive efficiency and profitability across businesses. Let’s see what they had to say.

So tell us a little bit more about you! Where did the idea for your FoodTech company come from?

Controlant’s team: The way the temperature-controlled supply chain currently works is broken. Controlant is fixing it. Our mission is to ensure consumer safety and reduce global cold chain waste by 70 percent. Controlant develops next-generation solutions that are improving quality and safety and reducing the staggering losses in the cold chain. Those losses currently total over $35 billion worth of perishable food products annually. Roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, or approximately 1.3 billion tons and $1 trillion worth, is wasted.  Roughly 40 percent of all food & beverage products require temperature-controlled transportation, and those numbers are on the rise as consumer demand and population growth continue.

How is tech central to your business?

Controlant’s team: Controlant develops real-time temperature monitoring and cold chain visibility solutions that help protect customers from food safety issues and food brands from quality issues that impact customer loyalty and satisfaction. We help restaurant operators, suppliers, retailers, and other food companies maintain complete visibility and control over temperature-sensitive and perishable products while in transit and in storage. 

The pay-per-shipment, Controlant Cold Chain as a Service (ChaaS)® solution provides a single source of supply chain truth, consisting of reusable Internet of Things (IoT) data loggers that send mission-critical data and insights in real-time to a proprietary, cloud-enabled software platform, and cost-reducing operational services. Controlant customers leverage the improved visibility to connect stakeholders, improve efficiency, and increase revenues.

Why do you think it’s important to see the food industry embrace tech?

Controlant’s team: Controlant’s history is rooted in the highly-regulated pharmaceutical industry. Pharma regulations require manufacturers to maintain strict visibility and control over their entire supply chain, from manufacture to the last mile to sufficiently ensure patient safety. 

The lines between the pharmaceutical cold chain and temperature-controlled foods have varied widely, although in recent years, the lines have become blurred with the rise of stricter food safety regulations, including the U.S.’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), and the rise of nutraceuticals and cannabis-based products. A result of these trends is that the need for stricter standardization and controls has emerged. Although they are considered separate industries, the food and beverage sector and pharmaceuticals are in actuality similar in a number of aspects and each can learn a lot from one another.

 

 

Want to know more? Check out Controlant’s full profile here.

Congratulations again to Controlant for ranking 4th in the category “Food Safety & Traceability” of the Foodtech 500 list.

To find out who else made it into the FoodTech 500; the top Food Tech companies in the world, click here.

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