FEED-X 2019 Finalists' Day
Exciting decisions were made on 17 September 2019, and these decisions have opened up significant doors to address the challenges we are all facing from climate change.
It was the FEED-X 2019 Finalists’ Day, and was a key milestone for the FEED-X programme, marking the end of the FEED-X programme’s Search & Select stage.
Project X launched the search for innovative solutions to common sustainability problems in the feed and aquaculture sectors in early May, and received over 124 expressions of interest from innovators eager to commercialise their ideas. After a careful period of shortlisting by a handful of carefully curated external experts, 15 of the best innovators were selected to be assessed on FEED-X Finalists’ Day.
On the day, a group of 10 challenger innovations were selected by a panel of 13 subject matter experts in the fields of nutrition, feed, environment, alternative protein, aquaculture innovation, finance, assurance. These experts were from Skretting, the World Bank, WWF, DTU Aqua, and family offices, amongst others.
The successful innovators have been invited to progress to the next stage of this acceleration programme; compressing the time otherwise required to scale the adoption of sustainable alternatives into corporate value chains.
FEED-X has lead partner support from one of the largest animal and aquaculture feed suppliers in the world – Nutreco, and its aquaculture division Skretting – which represent a significant share of the global feed market and €5.9 billion of purchasing power. Financial support for the FEED-X programme has also come from Ikea (IKEA Supply AG), WWF and EIT Climate-KIC, and additional technical support from UNEP-One Planet, Cambridge University and other universities. The co-ordinated approach between organisations in the FEED-X programme has given entrepreneurs rare access to markets and allows them to commercialise-at-scale for brilliant, and sustainable alternatives worldwide.
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“At Skretting, we have seen that the biggest limitation in implementation of novel ingredients is scale. This project allows a game-changing discussion to mobilise the necessary resources, and highlights why we’re involved in the project – we can make a real impact to global sustainability. And of course we see a direct link with our mission of Feeding the Future.” James Rose, Operations & Procurement Director, Skretting
“At IKEA, we always strive to make things better. Nothing is so good that it cannot be improved. Through the FEED-X initiative, connecting expertise from the full value chain, we want to make a big leap by improving the sustainability footprint of salmon. We are proud to take part in this industry transformation, making salmon an even better product for people and planet” Jesper Juul Andersen, Category Area Manager, IKEA of Sweden
