An interview with Daphna Nissenbaum, co-founder of TIPA, one of Forward Fooding’s top 500 Food Tech startups.

Daphna Nissenbaum, co-founder of TIPA

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 Daphna, the powerhouse behind TIPA, a company that develops and produces high-end compostable, flexible packaging solutions for the food industry. Let’s see what she had to say.

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

Daphna: I was CEO of a research center on capital markets and prior to that, had held few positions as a software engineer. Packaging and plastics weren’t really on my mind when it all started… Then one day I had an argument with one of my kids about why he hadn’t returned his water bottle from school. All that waste, plastic bottles lying at the bottom of the ocean for hundreds of years… I thought, what if I put water in a bag, a bio-degradable bag? And like an orange, we will eat or drink the content of the package, and dispose of the package into the organic waste stream. The package will then decompose and go back to nature. If that happened, we wouldn’t have to worry anymore about our kids not bringing their water bottles home! At that point, I met TIPA’s co-founder, Tal Neuman. We started working together on designing cool water bags for kids, athletics, adults and more. We hired bioplastic experts to find the appropriate materials for those beverage bags. After a few months, we came back and said that there was no biodegradable material on the market that was suitable for packing liquid in the bags. They suggested we come back in a few years and make the same inquiry.

We thought to ourselves: well, humanity landed on the moon, so how difficult can it be to make this bio-degradable bag? We had no idea then how difficult this could be. That’s how TIPA, our company, was founded.

How is tech central to your business?

Daphna: R&D is a fundamental part of the core identity of TIPA since the business model is fabless. It enables the company to focus resources on the design of innovative solutions for viable compostable food packaging solutions.

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

Daphna: I think consumers are voting with their choices against unsustainable brands. The role of technology is crucial in leading advanced creative solutions to the growing need for an environmentally and healthy food industry.

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

Congratulations again to TIPA for ranking first in the category “Surplus & Waste Management” 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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