The European Innovation Council Business Acceleration Services and Nestlé, invite you to participate in our brand-new Planet.tech challenge. This is a great opportunity to enhance your cooperation with Nestlé and co-create innovative solutions to a number of pre-determined challenges related to the European Green Deal, the European Commission roadmap to make EU’s economy sustainable. 

Apply and step up to the plate.

Applications are open until 19 April 2020 23.59 (CET). 

What’s Planet.tech?

The European Green Deal, and the major sustainability challenges it will tackle, ask for close collaboration across value chains. Concrete pilots between the best start-ups/scaleups and knowledgeable corporates are critical to demonstrate business solutions and de-risk major investments for scaling.

With the Planet.tech initiative, the EIC Business Acceleration Services offers the opportunity to enhance your cooperation with Nestlé and jointly devise innovative solutions to a number of pre-determined challenges in the field of sustainability. 

Selection procedure

Nestlé will dedicate a team of experts to select the SME with the highest possibilities to develop a joint Proof of Concept (PoC) around the challenges proposed. 

On 3-4 June, the pre-selected EIC SME will meet online with high level corporate decision makers to present their solutions and establish one-to-one business discussions.  

After this initial meeting, Nestlé will take a final decision regarding the development of a PoC or any other kind of pilot collaboration. Successful pilots will be invited to showcase their solution in a dedicated event in Brussels, Belgium in autumn 2020 (tbd).

Challenges

Nestlé Waters is currently looking for innovative approaches and solutions for smarter and more sustainable packaging. Specifically, the following challenges:

1. Reduce amount of food packaging and ensure it is recyclable and recycled

• Explore selling in bulk (for dry and wet food items)
• Explore circular concept of packaging (collected & reused) while considering all levels of packaging – primary, secondary, etc…
• Identify alternatives for recycling of flexible plastic packaging
• Explore light weight food grade alternative packaging 
• Identify environmentally friendly On the go/Takeaway/Single serve packaging & utensils
• In addition to our current rPET efforts, identify alternative recycled resins for non-alcoholised beverage containers
• Technologies and solutions embedded in packaging to prevent microbial contamination in re-fill of products 

2. Reduce CO2 emissions in manufacturing and supply chain

• Optimize transportation and explore alternative fuels (H2 etc.)
• Explore boilers with lower environmental impact for factories (wood pyrolysis, biogas, etc.)
• Explore solutions for farmers to reduce CO2/CH4 emissions, especially regarding kettles
• Develop digital solutions to measure environmental footprint (for producers and consumers) 
• Identify alternative distribution paths (decreasing emissions)

3. Produce more sustainable food products

• Identify gentle food processing technologies 
• Define optimal plant-based proteins based on local sources
• Explore ways of valorizing waste in agriculture & production
• Develop digital solutions to prevent food waste 
• Develop tools for raw materials tracking/digitalization of food chain

4. Neutral environmental impact

Nestlé Waters Benelux and Valvert are on a trajectory with Co2Logic to diminish the environmental impact across the entire value chain of the Etalle factory in Belgium. One of our aims is to become completely carbon-neutral, with limited off-set, in the coming years. In this regard we’re looking at:

• Solutions that help us and the municipality of Etalle protect and improve the forest area around the water source
• Solutions that can help improve biodiversity and protect the natural environment in the region
• Dedicated solutions on-site that can help generate a positive CO2 impact by Etalle on the environment
• Green energy production and storing for factory purposes, on- and off-site
• Solutions that further help reduce water usage in production

This opportunity is brought to you by the EIC pilot Business Acceleration Services. Read our 2019 yearly wrap-up and our report on EIC Corporate Days to learn more about what we do and how we do it and check the EIC Community regularly. 

To explore other opportunities to connect with the largest corporates in Europe, keep an eye on our events page. 

Should you have any questions regarding the event, please refer to our helpdesk: https://community-smei.easme-web.eu/contact (please choose “Planet.tech Nestlé” as the subject).