Periodic Reporting for period 3 - METAMORFOSIS (Disrupting the sports nutrition market with a healthy, high-performance, bee product-based energy gel in highly innovative compostable packaging)
Período documentado: 2021-09-01 hasta 2022-08-31
A drawback of the increasing popularity of endurance sports is the huge amount of plastic packaging waste they generate. When creating our own sports nutrition brand, we decided to start with the product category with the greatest number of consumer pain points: energy gels, which are consumed during sports activity to maintain and boost performance. In addition to their single use plastic packaging, which is unfortunately often discarded on the ground outdoors, they typically contain unhealthy, synthetic ingredients which provide sub-optimal sports performance and cause digestive issues, and hard-to-use, unhygienic packet designs. Thanks to the Metamorfosis project, we have created our own brand of sports nutrition, WIN IT, which addresses these issues. Furthermore, when we designed the project, the European Parliament was set to prohibit the use of many single use plastics in 2021 (it did), yet we found that there was no home compostable packaging on the market which was suitable for long-life semi-liquid products, so we developed our own under the Metamorfosis Project, filling an important gap in the packaging market, which we are able to license to third parties, in addition to using it for our own sports nutrition products. We wanted our packaging to be home compostable, as it is a type of biodegradable packaging which composts at ambient temperature so that, while we will always discourage this behaviour, if it’s discarded in nature, it will compost, adding nutrients to the soil. The preferred ways to discard it are in a city organic waste bin or by literally composting it at home. Plastic can take up to 1,000 years to decompose and, according to UN Secretary-General A. Guterres. Our project is important for society because of the contribution it makes to reducing the presence of single use plastic both in sports nutrition and other sectors. Furthermore, the World Health Organisation estimates that 62% of Europeans are overweight and 25% are obese.Our products, which offer elite sports performance, only contain wholesome, natural ingredients and no refined sugar. Finally, according to Nature, some EU states are losing as much as one third of their bee colonies per year, yet bees play a crucial role for the planet and in our food supply. As we use bee products in some of our formulations, we have committed to donating 1% of revenues to the EU-wide bee protection organisation BeeLife.
WP1:We have completed the formulation of the 5 promised flavours of energy gels.We have successfully conducted industrial manufacturing tests on the 5 products and produced sample batches. In response to comments from our clients related to needing a wider range of products under the same brand for them to stock it/make WIN IT stand out on the shelves, we have developed a vanilla flavoured recovery drink. In this way, the brand is better positioned. We have secured multiple certifications to boost the market attractiveness of our products.
WP2:We have completed the refinement of our food grade multilayer film and injection material, which meet all of our requirements and are suitable for dry and semi-liquid products; they have high barriers to oxygen and water vapour and can be used for packaging in contact with food for different lengths of time depending on the type of food packaged – from 6 months to more than 12 months. We have also met the goal of home compostability for both materials. Our injection material composts in well under 12 months’, which is a requirement to secure home compostability certification and we are very close to meeting the same goal for our flexible film.We have characterised the materials and have additional food contact, shelf-life and compostability test of our compostable packaging solutions ongoing to widen their applications further. Certifications will be secured in the coming months.
WP3:We have refined and documented our industrialised WIN IT energy gel production process, as well as our packaging manufacturing processes. We have evaluated and selected all the suppliers we need to manufacture our home compostable packaging gels. We soft launched out WIN IT products in plastic packaging in April 2022 and will migrate them to our own home compostable packaging in Q2 2023.
WP4:We have conducted 3 tests to assess consumers’ perception of all 5 WIN IT gel flavours, the recovery drink and the refined branding and packaging design. We have also worked independently with professional and amateur sportspeople to field test the gels during training and race scenarios.The results fully support customer acceptance of our formulations and our business case, as we have validated the market demand for our products, acceptance of our branding and the sports performance of our gels.
WP5:The soft product launches (samples) in the first half of 2022 have driven the bulk of our commercialisation, dissemination and communication (CDC) activities. We have conducted substantial branding, planning, awareness and other CDC activities, we were less reliant on physical exhibitions and events, and focus more on digital activities. The soft launch of the WIN IT-related Beat Best sports nutrition calculator brand and WIN IT product range in March and April 2022 respectively, activated the marketing, event, communications and CSR programmes that had been planned in previous months. We completed the branding refinement and implemented it on all packaging and marketing materials; attended some offline sports and industry events; identified brand and partner ambassadors, and executed on our CSR programme.
WP6:We have filed applications to register & protect all project patents and other IPR; We have ensured all legislation applicable to the project has been complied with, and that FSS is protected by contracts/indemnities/non-disclosure agreements/insurance policies from suppliers and from other issues. Additionally, we have ensured all claims, recommendations & other publicly-facing information meets all legal requirements. Also, we have ensured our websites, enterprise relationship management (ERP) system and all other repositories of customer/other sensitive data comply with all applicable data protection legislation (GDPR).
WP7:Reporting was in place throughout the project, focused on the completion of project tasks and deliverables to timeline, specifications and budget.
WP2:We have completed the refinement of our food grade multilayer film and injection material, which meet all of our requirements and are suitable for dry and semi-liquid products; they have high barriers to oxygen and water vapour and can be used for packaging in contact with food for different lengths of time depending on the type of food packaged – from 6 months to more than 12 months. We have also met the goal of home compostability for both materials. Our injection material composts in well under 12 months’, which is a requirement to secure home compostability certification and we are very close to meeting the same goal for our flexible film.We have characterised the materials and have additional food contact, shelf-life and compostability test of our compostable packaging solutions ongoing to widen their applications further. Certifications will be secured in the coming months.
WP3:We have refined and documented our industrialised WIN IT energy gel production process, as well as our packaging manufacturing processes. We have evaluated and selected all the suppliers we need to manufacture our home compostable packaging gels. We soft launched out WIN IT products in plastic packaging in April 2022 and will migrate them to our own home compostable packaging in Q2 2023.
WP4:We have conducted 3 tests to assess consumers’ perception of all 5 WIN IT gel flavours, the recovery drink and the refined branding and packaging design. We have also worked independently with professional and amateur sportspeople to field test the gels during training and race scenarios.The results fully support customer acceptance of our formulations and our business case, as we have validated the market demand for our products, acceptance of our branding and the sports performance of our gels.
WP5:The soft product launches (samples) in the first half of 2022 have driven the bulk of our commercialisation, dissemination and communication (CDC) activities. We have conducted substantial branding, planning, awareness and other CDC activities, we were less reliant on physical exhibitions and events, and focus more on digital activities. The soft launch of the WIN IT-related Beat Best sports nutrition calculator brand and WIN IT product range in March and April 2022 respectively, activated the marketing, event, communications and CSR programmes that had been planned in previous months. We completed the branding refinement and implemented it on all packaging and marketing materials; attended some offline sports and industry events; identified brand and partner ambassadors, and executed on our CSR programme.
WP6:We have filed applications to register & protect all project patents and other IPR; We have ensured all legislation applicable to the project has been complied with, and that FSS is protected by contracts/indemnities/non-disclosure agreements/insurance policies from suppliers and from other issues. Additionally, we have ensured all claims, recommendations & other publicly-facing information meets all legal requirements. Also, we have ensured our websites, enterprise relationship management (ERP) system and all other repositories of customer/other sensitive data comply with all applicable data protection legislation (GDPR).
WP7:Reporting was in place throughout the project, focused on the completion of project tasks and deliverables to timeline, specifications and budget.
Reduction in single-use and other plastics worldwide: We have substantially surpassed the state-of-the-art in terms of our home compostable packaging innovations for long-life semi-liquid products, as we have:1)Achieved well beyond a 6-month product shelf-life in our packaging,whereas our closest packaging competitor has only achieved 6 weeks 2)We have also created a unique home compostable non-drip fitment using an innovative material.3)We have finalized our innovative gel packet design.These innovations mean that our energy gels’ packaging is unique and contains no plastic. Healthy sports nutrition products which help fight obesity:We have formulated our energy gels with 100% natural, whole ingredients and achieved elite sports performance results, which will allow sportspeople to reduce the unhealthy synthetic ingredients.A number of our energy gels are formulated using bee/apiculture products. We support sustainable beekeeping and have committed to donating 1% of sales revenue from the Metamorfosis range, once profitable, to pan-EU bee protection organization BeeLife.