From AI to Energy Optimization: Barilla and Plug and Play Recognize the Most Innovative Food-Tech Startups

Barilla and Plug and Play, the world's largest open innovation platform, have announced the four winning projects of Good Food Makers, a program launched in 2019 with the goal of stimulating the development of new sustainable food solutions. The winners will participate in an eight-week program, working closely with Barilla managers to develop and test new technologies, benefiting from the vision of a company that has been dedicated to producing good and high-quality food for 147 years.

The winners of the four categories in the 2024 edition—AI for Consumer Insights, Tasty and Healthy, Energy Shift, and Smart Start: Operators Onboarding—are:

• Voxpopme: A UK-based startup that is revolutionizing qualitative feedback analysis using artificial intelligence. The platform enables quick and in-depth understanding of consumer opinions, analyzing video and text data to highlight specific customer needs. This helps businesses create products that align more closely with market expectations and establish more authentic, personalized relationships.

• Phynova: Also from the UK, Phynova focuses on the power of natural ingredients for well-being. The company rediscovered the value of plants like white mulberry for blood sugar control, offering healthy solutions aimed at prevention through nutrition.

• Ecop: An Austrian company that has developed the rotation heat pump, an advanced technology for high temperature heat pumps, optimizing heating in production processes and significantly reducing energy consumption and environmental impact.

• Manual.to: Based in Belgium, Manual.to simplifies corporate training and procedures with a platform that enables the creation and sharing of visual instructions, making learning easier and helping businesses ensure quality and safety at every stage of production.

To support their growth journey, the four selected startups will receive a total amount of €40,000 and the opportunity to collaborate with Barilla Group in the future, as collaboration with innovative companies is a fundamental part of Barilla’s business approach. Thanks to this program a milestone was achieved in 2024, when Barilla completed the full digitalization of its fresh basil supply chain for Pesto Barilla alla Genovese, ensuring full traceability and efficiency. The basil (fresh and semi-processed) used in the pesto was the first in the world to be tracked using blockchain technology, due to the collaboration with Connecting Food - a winner of a previous edition of Good Food Makers.

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