In the period from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report several specific objectives were addressed regarding the technological concept of feasibility study.
Selection of the best suitable carrier able to express all pre-determined characteristics was conducted. From the group of several hundreds possible carrier materials, through theoretical and practical evaluation, only a small group of natural, adequate carriers was selected for further research.
Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of corresponding carriers was developed in order to estimate their impact on human health, ecosystem and resource depletion. Although “teaser products” were obtained in this period, in order to reach final product characteristics in the terms of physicochemical and sensory characterisation of the obtained product, more studies and experiments will be conducted in the next period.
One of the most promising results obtained refer to the low-temperature spray drying of sugar syrup with high yields and total product recovery. Previous investigation in this field was focused only on the standard high temperatures spray drying process. However, several challenges were addressed in the conducted research, mainly referring to the product stability, texture and hygroscopic characteristics. Further research should be focused on the formulation of crystallization procedure prior to product drying process aiming at the production of stable, crystallized product having all necessary “sugar characteristics”.
We have further analysed our target market and entered into different forms of business cooperation with a wide variety of stakeholders.
SLADCORE project has been presented at Future-food Tech in New York and at Seeds&Chips 2018, Global Food Innovation Summit in Milano, where we have been awarded the FUTURE FOOD AWARD.
The results of our dissemination and exploitation strategy are shown in received invitations to several accelerators, such as Forward Food Milano and Kickstart Mass Challenge Zurich; interest to invest was expressed by several VCs attending shows and e-pitching events, like
https://www.euroquity.com/en/home(opens in new window) In terms of Intellectual Property Management, we have filed a patent application for our solution in April 2018, under the reference number 2018042616022XXXDE (German Patent and Trade Mark Office).
