Inline real-time 4.0 quality monitoring in food production

Project Information

FoodMonitor

Grant agreement ID: 815493

DOI

10.3030/815493

Project closed

EC signature date 9 May 2018

Start date 1 July 2018

End date 31 October 2018

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

Insort GmbH
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FoodMonitor (Inline real-time 4.0 quality monitoring in food production)

Reporting period: 2018-07-01 to 2018-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Food safety and quality are of the utmost importance in today’s society. Thus, food production companies need to assure that their products are safe and good quality. Producers need an accurate real-time method of scanning both raw materials and produced goods to identify potentially dangerous substances and acquire data regarding the products they will process. Insort is developing an accurate real-time scanner to identify the chemical composition of foods at a molecular level, enabling companies the detection of dangerous compounds, improving processing, identifying bad products and reducing waste. During the Phase 1, our objectives were to analyze the technical, commercial and financial feasibility of our food scanner for a successful commercialization.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We defined the required improvements based on the feedback of our current customers within the potato industry, as our primary customers. We defined the necessary tasks to upgrade our in-line, in-time food scanner, as well as all the resources needed in terms of personnel, materials, equipment and external collaborations, including customers to conduct trials with. We established a risk management plan with mitigation and contingency measures for the technical, commercial and financial aspects.
We evaluated the food analysis and the potato markets to confirm that our product is in line with the trends. Moreover, we conducted an FTO assessment to confirm that we can proceed with our project without any IP conflict and checked the competition, finding not real direct competitors.
Finally, we established the necessary investment to finalize our system and have it commercially ready by 2021, defined our funding strategy and established the 5-year sales projection following the Phase 2 project.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Insort is creating a real-time scanning system to enable food production companies’ process chain to certify the quality of their products, identify potentially dangerous substances, improve their production lines and reduce food wastage through improved data acquisition. Current foodstuff evaluation is based on sample analysis, which is imprecise. At Insort, we expect to greatly improve this process, enabling better automation while allowing for accurate chemical analysis of food. Our expectation is to have a fully mature food scanner by 2021, which will allow for a cumulative revenue of €50.46M during the first 5 years of commercialization as we consolidate and expand our position in Europe and North America.

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