Sofia-based healthy snack and ‘superfood’ producer Smart Organic has won a €2 million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to aid expansion for the rising healthy snack and ‘superfood’ manufacturer.
The number of Germans who look for animal welfare logos on meat products is rising, according to a 1000-strong survey commissioned by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, which gives a glimpse into the nation's changing dietary habits and preferences.
Food waste-conscious start-up, ChicP, transforms leftover fruit and vegetables into a variety of flavoured hummus, and is crowdfunding to expand into new markets.
Katana, a €1.2 million investment fund is calling for Europe’s brightest entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas and win funding for agrifood innovation, from functional foods to tech solutions for sustainable sourcing.
Sustainability wins another vote for the “most important” trend to watch in 2017, followed closely by plant-based protein, according to a small, but well-educated group of nutrition experts, surveyed by Ketchum’s Global Food and Beverage Practice and...
French player Roquette is a decade into protein – and its commitment is building having just announced a major pea-focused investment in North America. At Health Ingredients Europe (HiE) the firm told us of work it believes will transform the sector.
Whilst smaller scale sustainable fishing practices protect the oceans from depletion of marine life, they are vastly more detrimental to the environment, say researchers
Sales of ethical food and drink increased 5.3% in 2015 to just over £9.03 billion (€10.55 billion), according to new research. Organic continued its revival but Fairtrade has struggled again.
Germany’s agriculture minister Christian Schmidt has weighed in on the debate surrounding plant-based alternatives using meat names, calling them "completely misleading" - but the European Commission seems reluctant to act.
The Nobel Foundation’s ‘Your plate, our planet’ event featured talks by start-ups boasting the world changing power of new food technologies like ‘food computers’ and tropical weather forecasting.
Only the seemingly foolish would have predicted 2016 would see the UK vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump win the US presidential election. But in the post-truth era, these are the facts.
With 2017 just around the corner, it's time to start thinking about which future trends and burning topics will be making their mark on the food and drink industry next year. Here are some of our predictions.
This year there’s been a bit of a lab-meat love-in, but are consumers ready to buy into it? I’m not so sure, especially if they can’t divorce the concept from other more controversial technologies like genetic modification.
Suez and Total are calling on Europe's food industry to sell its used cooking oil for biofuel conversion, after pledging to increase the amount that is collected and recycled by 20%.
An independent think tank, IPES, has been set up to advise the EU and work towards creating a common food policy that would create a sustainable, healthy and profitable food system – a ‘plan B’ to the failures of the current framework.
The UK’s organic certification body, Soil Association, has defended organic food following an article in New Scientist which urged consumers to stop buying organic to protect the environment.
A major push to create new jobs and increase exports in the Danish food sector by more than DKK 30bn (€4bn) has been backed by food industry giants Arla Foods, Novozymes and Chr. Hansen.
Back in 2014 I interviewed Hans Jöhr, who at the time was corporate head of agriculture at Nestlé. We had a (refreshingly) open discussion about certification schemes. Some of them are “cheating consumers” and “cannot help farmers be better farmers per...
Experts have urged Gulf states to look to an Andean super-food beloved of hipsters as a staple crop at a time when groundwater supplies are shrinking and becoming more saline.
Researchers have developed a novel processing technology that prepares soybean oil without producing unhealthy trans-fats, which they say could help reformulation efforts.
Interview with counsel for six alleged child slaves
A lawyer representing six alleged child slaves working in cocoa in a class action against Nestlé, ADM and Cargill says the ramifications of the case on the chocolate industry could be huge.
A pan-EU sustainable food project sees Israeli astaxanthin supplier Algatechnologies, champion of pea protein Roquette and Dutch nutrition giant DSM among its 50 partners that will invest close to €1.2bn over the next seven years.
Agri-food giant Olam has defended its palm oil operations against accusations they are a 'black box' of secrecy that funnels palm oil linked to deforestation from rogue traders to global brands like Unilever and Nestlé.
It’s ethics and environmental performance rather than snazzy apps and Facebooking that can win millennials over, according to a survey of young consumers in France, Germany, the UK and the US.
Confident there’s enough soy, palm oil and beef to go around and your policies can weather the risks ahead on everything from climate change and deforestation to reputation and regulation? Think again, say the authors of two new reports.
Start-up Bio-marine Ingredients Ireland (BII) hopes to become a major new supplier of lipids, protein and calcium powders following an initial €15m investment in its plant.
The rise of alternative ingredients, technological innovations and new approaches to gastronomy all look to provide more sustainable sources of nutrition in the future. But as food is changing to keep up with the times, is there a limit to how much consumers...
Wessanen has consolidated its position in Europe's sustainable, organic food market with the acquisition of Spanish firm Biogran. Does this mean the Dutch firm itself is looking increasingly attractive to investors?
'Climate smart' pulses are essential to global food security by delivering high-nutrition protein to people and critical nutrients to soil, said the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on World Soil Day.
France is the top ranking country for tackling food waste and nutritional challenges while Germany is ranked number one for sustainable agriculture, according to a 25-nation food sustainability index by the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN).
The success of chia and quinoa has opened the door for other less-known ancient grains, but one South African company exporting teff is wary of a boom and bust effect.
Demand for organic food in Europe is booming but suppliers are struggling to match it, and there are worries that the Commission's proposal to decertify organic food that contains traces of unauthorised pesticides could worsen the situation.
A global carbon price is “unlikely” to cause major shifts in consumption patterns between foods, but supply chains could be decarbonised if more companies looked to incentivise reductions upstream, according to a new analysis.
Amnesty International has uncovered “systemic” cases of child labour and labour rights abuses in Indonesian palm oil plantations operated by Wilmar, tracing the palm oil back to firms including Nestlé, Unilever and Kellogg – companies that all claim to...
Some foods have a bigger carbon footprint than others. Cue the need for a carbon label so consumers can choose accordingly? Perhaps not - as Tesco and PepsiCo have found out.
Jaap Korteweg was a ninth generation Dutch meat farmer before becoming a vegetarian unable to banish his cravings for meat. The CEO of The Vegetarian Butcher shares his experience and gives advice for budding 'mock meat' entrepreneurs.
Insects come to the crease as cricket protein set for sustained innings
British start-up Next Step Foods was at FoodMattersLive showcasing its cricket protein energy bars alongside 11 other insect firms. Is this niche ingredient slowly seeping into the mainstream?
French industry group ANIA has published a report with best practice tips for communicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and responsible marketing.
The battle over plant-based terminology has moved into the meat arena with two Italian MEPs calling for laws to prevent vegetarian alternatives from using names such as prosciutto and mortadella.
Denmark unveiled its voluntary logo for animal welfare last month and Germany looks set to launch its own. But should a high standard of welfare not be the legal minimum rather than a premium product for high-end shoppers?
FoodConnects, a consortium of 50 industry and academic institutions from 13 different countries, has been selected by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) to tackle global food challenges through a €400m innovation partnership.
Portuguese supplier Allmicroalgae has taken calls to scale up production of microalgae to heart, with a project to combine big-volume fermentation with high-value photosynthesis methods now in swing.
Microalgae is often held up as the most promising sustainable protein that can feed a growing world population - but first production needs to be scaled up on industrial levels. "The costs of inaction are too steep to even contemplate,” writes the...
Film maker Michael Dorgan went to the forests of Latin America and Africa to investigate palm oil production while observing a palm oil-rich diet and returned convinced only multi-stakeholder action can provoke real progress.
A coalition of food industry giants pledged to “redouble their efforts” in combating carbon emissions, carbon dioxide and deforestation, at the COP22 meeting in Morocco last week.
Calls for mandatory country of origin labelling (COOL) are growing louder in Europe and supporters say it will restore trust, provide transparency and help consumers support local producers if they wish. But one political scientist sees it as "a...
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