15 agrifood teams joined EIT Food TeamUp programme

TeamUp is a programme in which technologists are matched with business professionals to create impactful agrifood companies. 

The programme is designed for two types of innovators: technologists with innovative agrifood solutions (tech co-founders) and entrepreneurial business professionals who want to build an agrifood startup (business co-founders). 

In the 2021 TeamUp edition, 63 innovators from 15 countries in Southern and Eastern Europe were invited to the Matchmaking phase of TeamUp. During the Matchmaking month, participants were networking, getting to know each other, testing relationship through business scenarios, pitching and learning more about their own values and ambition. 

After an intensive Matchmaking phase, 15 matches were made between tech and business co-founders. These 15 newly created teams will now continue into the Exploration phase during which they will explore and test their match. The teams will be supported with business building and team formation training, a stipend as well as business and team building coaching from 20 world-class experts. 

Below are the 15 teams accepted to the Exploration phase of TeamUp.  

• FresCon: Post-harvest technology which extends the shelf-life of fish by 3-4 times compared to conventional methods. Danial Fatchurrahman (Italy) and Marios Efthymiou (Greece)
• Fruit-based products with a reduction in their natural sugars contents that are suitable for fructose intolerant people. Antonio Fenoll Candela, Alvaro Valdes and Monta Rozenburga (Spain) 
• Ekolive - Biofertilizer enriched with bacteria, nutrients and organic acids, produced from bioleaching diverse natural resources, such as mineral waste, thereby also contributing to a circular economy. Darina Štyriaková (Slovakia), Thilo Hitz (Portugal) and Juan Noriega (Spain) 
• Marine collagen functional food products derived from discarded marine species in the fisheries of the Mediterranean Sea utilizing chemical-free green tech methods. Emre Yemisken (Turkey), Aylin Özayan (Italy) 
• 3-D bioprinted Meat: Delicious, nutritious and respectful meat produced using cost-effective 3D bioprinting cultivated meat technology. Sara Oliveira (Portugal), Clara B. (Italy)
• A green innovative biopesticide (Citrosorium) based on citrus biomass waste to prevent massive food loss in organic cereal crops and preserve nature and the environment. Sehrish Iftikhar (France), Pierre Blime (Estonia), Francesco Valente (Italy, UK), Anna Vittoria Carluccio (Italy)
• Efficiency energy utilization for Biogas production. Aleksandra Ivetić (Serbia), Teresa Braz (Portugal) 
• “Groam” provides fast disposables (i.e. foam packaging) to the polymer-foam industry using biomass-waste streams sourced from food processing waste. Zuzana Sediva (Czech Republic), Sophie Grimm (Switzerland), Sotiris Drekos (Greece) 
• Continuous and autonomous monitoring service to detect and prevent bacterial diseases and reduce the use of antibiotics in aquaculture. Sira Mogas Diez (Spain), Hugo Marques Dias (Portugal) 
• Customisable app that allows reliable data management in various agricultural activities by promoting the use of industry best practices in data analytics. José Pericao, José Almeida (Portugal) 
• ALBEDO is a bio-based thermal insulation material for the building construction, made with citrus waste. Laura Lorenzo (Portugal), Panos Kalogiorgas (Greece) 
• Developing Digital Twins for crops to improve accuracy and predictive control of nano-climates in controlled environment food production and lead to resource optimized agriculture to build an equitable food system. Endre Surinya, Julia Dalmadi (Hungary) 
• Aeroponix Robotics: an environmentally friendly, simple and affordable aeroponic vertical farming system for households and small businesses. Stefan Arsene, Iulia Ghiță (Romania) 
• AI Decision Support Tool to optimize consumption, reduce water costs and improve crop yield. Mary Grace Gasco (Hungary), Tomasz Orzechowski (Poland) 
• FARMARIO develops and produces technologies and ready-made container farms for hydroponics and vertical farming focused on sustainable automated local farms up to 1000 m2 of growing surface. Jakub Fay, Simon Barczi (Czech Republic)   

More information about TeamUp can be found on the programme webpage.