Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Magnesys (Efficient filtering of metallic impurities in food processing)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2019-12-01 al 2020-03-31
• protect the health of citizen;
• enable countries to assure safety and quality of food products for international trade; and
• verify that imported food products meet national requirements.
The legal framework for food safety in the EU is advanced yet currently in process. This is because serious food safety incidents during the last decades urged countries to review their food safety systems and to look for better ways to protect consumers against unsafe food.
MagneSys developed and tested a novel patent pending magnetic filter for food processing that allows the continuous filtering-out of iron magnetic particles from various solid foods in dry powder form such as flour for example. The founders are Mathias Béguin, CEO and Danny Caldas, CTO - who have both been graduated as Engineers of Applied Science in Microengineering at the University of Applied Sciences (HEIG-VD) in Yverdon- les-Bains, Switzerland. They joined their forces with the vision of Magnesys to become a leader in magnetic filters by supplying products to all food processing industries.
During Phase 1, the impact of the new product development and commercialization on the company was better understood and aligned with the overall business and financial strategy. The financial potential was quantified, with a profitability break-even to be reached at about CHF 2.0 M selling about 270 units in 2023.
Overall, Phase 1 provided time and resources to research the market, and better understand the next steps. Also, dozens of discussions took place with potential stakeholders, based on which MagnesSys was able to better define the objectives on the roadmap. In summary, Phase 1 convinced the management of the company to further pursue the idea and to prepare next steps towards the product development, to be conducted maybe also with the help of Phase 2 of the Horizon 2020 grant scheme.
The central goal of the European Commission's Food Safety policy is to ensure a high level of protection of human health regarding the food industry — Europe’s largest manufacturing and employment sector. Therefore, Magnesys`s solution contributes to a more safe processing of food materials that will improve also the quality of European products on the world markets. The European flour milling industry is the leading food industry in grain processing, using around 45 million tonnes of common wheat and rye plus 2 million tonnes of oats a year to produce around 35 million tons of flour on an annual basis (EU-27). The number of flour milling company exceeds 3.800 of which a large majority are small and medium-sized companies. The industry employs about 45.000 people and represents a turnover of €15 billion. The average use of capacity is about 65%. As regulations will be more and more severe, the European flour million industry needs innovation to cope with the new requirements. Magnesys`s novel HGF technology will help companies to comply with stricter regulations, ensure safe food for EU citizen and improve the competitiveness of European manufacturing companies on global markets.