An interview with Pasi Vainikka and Juha-Pekka Pitkänen, founders of Solar Foods, 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 Pasi and Juha-Pekka, the founding team behind Solar Foods, an innovative Food Processing company aiming to disconnect food production from agriculture. Let’s see what the founders had to say.

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

Solar Foods’ team: We thought agriculture is the main problem of food production. Land use, water use, fertilizers. We saw renewable electricity becoming cheaper, and CO2 capture from the air emerging as a technology. We wondered if you could turn it into food. Apparently you can!

How is tech central to your business?

Solar Foods’ team: We use diversity of life. We grow natural organisms found in nature. However, to grow a single cell with only a few micrometers in size you need new technology to grow and harvest this food. That is what we can do with our fermentation technology.

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

Solar Foods’ team: Food accounts for 25% of the global greenhouse gas emission today. We are 7.5 billion on the planet. Soon we are 10 billion. What then…? We think new technologies can provide the solution(s).

Want to know more? Check out Solar Foods’ full profile here.

Congratulations again to Solar Foods for ranking 6th in the “Food Processing” category 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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