Taking place 15-16 October 2024 in Rome, EIT Food's all-new flagship event, Next Bite is a unique opportunity for the world's largest food innovation community to share knowledge, foster collaboration, and accelerate innovation across European food systems. EIT Food is supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union. 

With over 900 attendees over two days, the event has been uniting thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and practitioners from across the food system to share knowledge and innovative perspectives on the future of food. 

Sessions at the event have taken place over three stages, exploring topics aligned with EIT Food's three missions of: Healthier Lives Through Food, A Net Zero Food System, and Reducing Risk for a Fair and Resilient Food System. 

Richard Zaltzman, CEO, EIT Food, said: "The ambition for this community is growing. We need to think about impact – change that makes a difference. For this we need three ingredients: hope (e.g. the startups), inspiration (e.g. pioneer farmers, entrepreneurs), and connections." 

Viktoria de Bourbon de Parme, Chief Partnership Officer, EIT Food, said: "We have the passion and dedication to transform our food system. Each and one of us has a unique role to play"  

Collaborative companies recognised 

EIT Food has announced the winner of its third annual Corporate Startup Collaboration Award, which recognises corporates based on the ease of their collaboration with agrifood startups. 30 corporates were nominated from across Europe and from different parts of the food system. 

The winner has been announced as the Südzucker Group. Based in Germany, Südzucker is the largest sugar producer in the world, and produces a wide range of food and animal feed products. 

Alliance launches to standardise eco-labelling 

EIT Food has officially launched the International Alliance for Impact Data. EIT Food will convene the Alliance to help develop internationally adopted and accepted standards for the environmental scoring of food. The Alliance will work to ensure that companies and supply chains can apply one standard for compliance across multiple geographics. 

Rewarding innovative startups 

During Next Bite, EIT Food announced 15 winners of the 2024 EIT Food Accelerator Network Tech Validation Awards.  

€50,000 was awarded to the following European startups: 

• AgroGrIN Tech – which collects and transforms the by-products produced by farmers, post-harvest and processing industries, into bio-based, clean-label ingredients, which are fulfilling the food, nutraceutical and cosmetic industries. 

• Esencia Foods – which is pioneering the way for sustainable and healthy food options in Europe by developing whole-cut, mycelium-based fish and seafood alternatives. 

• NOOVI – which offers a globally unique line of marking pheromones "Pheromark" that prevent pests from laying eggs on crops, without using any toxins. 

• Pack2Earth – which offers biobased circular economy materials for the packaging industry. 

• Primogene – which produces bioactive ingredients unique to human breast milk and proven to be crucial for infant development for safe and tailored nutrition to optimally support the growth and development of premature infants. 

€30,000 was awarded to: 

• Clean Food Group – which brings together pioneering scientific research and partnerships with the world's leading food and cosmetic manufacturers, to provide healthier, sustainable product choices that have a positive impact on the health of the planet. 

• Quest Meat – which is developing ingredients that will make cultivated meat affordable, scalable and sustainable. 

• CinSOIL – which offers solutions to enable the agri-food sector to effectively meet its sustainability goals through carbon emissions insetting. 

• Senoptica Technologies – which offers sensor technology to reduce global food waste by non-invasively monitoring modified atmosphere packaging in real time. 

• BOB FoodTech – which offers scalable and selective toxin removal solutions for the food and biotech industry. 

And €20,000 was awarded to: 

• New Wave Biotech – which offers proprietary technology to empower SynBio innovators with the tools to get to market quicker, better and at low cost. 

• Elaniti – which establishes the condition of the soil microbiome, identifying helpful and unhelpful microbes relative to crop performance. 

• MarinaTex – which offers a home compostable alternative to plastic film. 

• Kokomodo – which crafts real, controlled, climate-resilient cacao, accessible globally all year round, using cellular agriculture technology. 

• as well as the Brazilian Tech Validation Award winners:  

• Gran Moar - which transforms malt bagasse, a waste product from beer production, into a new food product, special malt flour;  

• Typcal – which works with mycelium fermentation to create new ingredients for the food industry. 

• Vaca Roxa, which a manufactures an IoT digital device capable of identifying the degree of bovine mastitis infection. 

The winners will use the funding to run projects to further test and accelerate their technology, working closely with EIT Food's dynamic network of partners, universities, research centres, facilities and resources across Europe. 

And supporting new startups to accelerate and scale 

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is partnering with EIT Food, Europe's leading food innovation initiative, to launch a new agrifood accelerator programme for start-ups in EBRD's EU economies. Through the accelerator, early stage agrifood startups across EBRD's EU markets will receive tailored support to scale up their innovative solutions, helping to address global food system challenges. 

By joining the EIT Food Accelerator Network, the new hub in Warsaw will open up opportunities for startups not only locally but across Europe and beyond. Startups selected for this accelerator will benefit from the extensive expertise and resources of EIT Food's network, which includes industry-leading corporates, research institutions, and universities. 

In addition, these startups will have the unique opportunity to access potential investments of up to €1.5 million from EIT Food, helping them scale their innovations more rapidly. This initiative strengthens the network's global reach, with a newly launched hub in Brazil in 2024 marking EIT Food's first expansion outside Europe.