Aqua Lub
Team Aqua Lub is developing a superior lubrication technology with long-lasting hydration properties, to launch a new water based lubricant product.
The current product line includes a range of clean formulations that have been developed using environmentally friendly plant-based materials, which perform strikingly better than other commercial aqueous lubricants currently on the market. It even outperforms our naturally lubricating human saliva.
What’s more impressive is that the technology can be applied to other areas. For example, such as a fat replacer to design low-fat foods with the right lubricity balance, or a frozen food thickening agent to help people that have issues with swallowing. It can also be a personal lubricant or a saliva substitute for dry mouth sufferers.
With its multiple application opportunities, the team is aiming to transform people's lives, predominantly focusing on the growing elderly population who are highly affected by obesity and oral processing issues, among many other diseases.
It is rewarding to know that we can help improve the health conditions and quality of food consumption for these people.
Currently, what are your biggest challenges?
Our biggest challenge is identifying all the opportunity areas and prioritising these according to their maximum potential for impact, alongside minimum risk.
How has the Seedbed Incubator programme helped you to overcome these challenges?
The programme has guided us through the market discovery journey, helping us to identify the key opportunity areas, and to assess each of our target markets in terms of their market size and market growth rates.
We have identified more specific needs for our innovation, the key industry stakeholders involved, and we now have more clarity on what our competitive landscape looks like.
What have been your highlights of the programme?
The programme workshops have been really helpful. We are learning how to develop a business plan to attract investors and our negotiation skills and pitching competencies are quickly shaping up! We can now confidently demonstrate the critical need for our solution.
Above all, Seedbed has enabled us to benefit from EIT Food’s extensive network. In particular, it is giving us access to a wide number of important stakeholders and supportive contacts. We are very excited for the journey ahead.
