Project description
Nano-sized ice particles for longer shelf life
One of the most traded food commodities in Europe and beyond, fishery and aquaculture products are critical sources of income and nutrition. However, technological advances in terms of chilling fresh foods sustainably are lacking. Currently, the equipment used by seafood producers, harvesters and processors does little to adequately address issues such as maximum weight retention, improved shelf life and appearance, reduced hard labour and enough space for catch – and all at an affordable price. In this context, the EU-funded nanoICE project will bring to market nano-sized ice particles that deliver a solution to all the above challenges; importantly, they will help improve weight retention, which means less bacterial decay. In turn, this will result in longer shelf life.
Objective
Fisheries and aquaculture are critical sources of nutrition, income and livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people around the world. World per capita fish supply reached a new record high of 20 kg in 2014. Fish continues to be one of the most valuable traded food commodities worldwide with more than half of fish exports by value originating in developing countries. Despite industry growth there have been very modest technological advances in chilling fresh foods resulting in high levels of food waste, lost revenues and an unacceptable environmental impact.
Production and Harvest International AS (PHI) is a seafood company with harvesting, processing and refrigeration technology expertise. It has identified a major gap in the cold chain market in the European Union and indeed worldwide and is targeting commercial opportunities throughout the fresh food value chain with nanoICE technology. The innovation of nanoICE responds to inefficiencies within the seafood and other fresh food industries. nanoICE is a patent pending technology that addresses the deficiencies of other commercial ice products used today by addressing the challenges faced by seafood harvesters and processors, namely: product weight retention; longer shelf-life; improved appearance; reducing hard labour; limited space for catch and trying to improve on these at an affordable price. nanoICE is game changing ice machine that delivers a combination of break-though solutions for all these challenges.
Through nanoICE technology PHI’s mid-term goal is to become a market leader fresh chilling solution with a minimum of 8.5% of total EU market in aquaculture, medium and small sized fishing vessels and processors. PHI has licensed and recently acquired the IP rights to further refine the development nanoICE to become more commercially robust for the market place and enter the European market with a methodical business approach supported by full-scale grant funding.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesfisheries
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringthermodynamic engineering
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturefruit growing
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutrition
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturevegetable growing
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
6475 MIDSUND
Norway
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.