The 5th Edition of BFFood drives 14 innovative entrepreneurship projects

• BFFood, the food sector accelerator promoted by Clusaga, has selected these initiatives from a total of 33 applications submitted with the aim of solving, from Galicia, some of the major challenges facing the food and beverage industry
• Of the selected projects, 4 will enter the consolidation program and 10 will enter the acceleration program
• All of them will have access to a specialized and personalized program with mentors, training, and other resources designed for business development, as well as funding provided by the Xunta de Galicia

Business Factory Food (BFFood), the vertical accelerator for the Galician food sector promoted by the Xunta de Galicia and driven by the Galician Food Cluster (Clusaga) and leading companies in the Galician food industry, has selected the 14 projects that will participate in its fifth edition.

Of those selected, 4 will enter the consolidation program and 10 will enter the acceleration program. The vast majority of them come from startups from Galicia, but there are also initiatives from the Basque Country and the Canary Islands.

All of them will receive comprehensive and specialized support, for nine months in the case of the acceleration program and twelve in the consolidation program, with access to mentoring, training, coaching, technical services, infrastructure and resources specifically designed for their field of development with the aim of boosting their innovative idea to address the challenges of the sector.

Furthermore, each startup will have the opportunity to receive financial support, through a participating loan from the Xunta through XesGalicia, which could involve a capitalization option of up to a maximum of €250,000 in the consolidation program. Meanwhile, in the acceleration program, they can also access funding from the Galician Government through the Galician Innovation Agency (Gain), amounting to €25,000 in non-refundable grants, and from XesGalicia, through a participating loan that could involve a capitalization option of up to €50,000.

This fifth edition received a total of 33 applications at both national and international levels and has had the support of 22 leading companies in the Galician food sector, which sought innovative solutions aligned with the resolution of the challenges posed among the proposals received, to support them in reaching the market, thus generating business opportunities for both.

Of these companies, those in charge of the mentoring process for the projects selected in the 5th Edition of BFFood will be Grupo Lence, Innolact, Grupo Nueva Pescanova, Grupo Pereira, Viña Costeira, Hijos de Rivera, Bodegas Martín Códax, Congalsa, and GADISA. Along with these, the entities AGACA and Clusaga also participate as mentors in this edition of the accelerator.

Projects selected for the Acceleration program

YOWUPMILK: This project proposes the development of milk and yogurts for dogs and cats in formats adapted to the market, with a shelf life of 18 months, without refrigeration and with a formula adapted to their nutritional needs.

GRABITVISION: A project from the Basque Country that will develop computer vision solutions for the agri-food sector, developing a platform based on Deep Learning that allows for the rapid and flexible development of various use cases on low-cost hardware.

SALMOIRA: It will develop semi-preserved products for direct consumption, ready-to-eat products, or food salting as a preservation method for subsequent desalted consumption, as well as a new packaged and preserved product intended for the HORECA channel or gourmet food.

ANFOOD: This project will develop a plug & play product that automatically learns to detect anomalies in food images, so that anyone without knowledge of Artificial Intelligence can autonomously implement a foreign body detection system.

GRADHOC: It will develop a multi-protocol Artificial Intelligence platform for the monitoring, optimization, and automation of facilities and alarms, with preventive and predictive analysis. The main benefits for food companies will be the management and optimization of energy in refrigeration facilities.

NIGAL: It performs automated stock management and makes sales predictions based on historical data using artificial intelligence algorithms. This allows for a reduction in the impact of raw material price increases and the degree of uncertainty in delivery times.

TOFU LANDEIRA: A project that manufactures organic soy-based tofu with organoleptic qualities that are highly differentiated from what exists on the market, produced, moreover, from its own certified organic crops.

RECARBO: A project that, through blockchain technology, ensures the traceability of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions of the product from its origin, evaluating and accrediting the veracity of the emissions generated throughout the value chain, in order to certify a carbon-neutral product under an internationally recognized standard (PAS 2050).

BIOCROPS: An initiative focused on the development of organic fertilizers from by-products of Tenebrio Molitor larvae rearing, generating a 100% natural organic fertilizer that prevents soil degradation in a sustainable way and obtains chitin as a biofortifier, in favor of Urban Farming.

SEA 4.0: The value proposition of SEA 4.0 is to sensorize marine crops to understand, with advanced data processing technologies, the main factors that influence the production of optimal quality products.

Projects selected for the Consolidation program

NSF 4.0: Néboda is a startup within the field of indoor vertical farming whose mission is the production of the highest quality, local vegetables, grown near points of sale and consumers, in a sustainable way and minimizing the ecological footprint as much as possible.

BUFFET WASTE: A project that features an intelligent system for measuring food waste generated in buffets and catering points of a hotel establishment. This application will allow for the quantification of buffet food waste, differentiating it by type and linking it to the profile of the type of guest staying there.

ENZICAS: A company that will bring to market a natural food additive that reduces the ripening times of cheeses and sausages, achieving optimization of operational costs, reducing the addition of salts in the final product and the CO₂ emissions produced throughout the production process.

PROVIDE: Diagnostic service and personalized advice for the wine sector for the development of biotechnological solutions for disease control and the valorization of by-products.