Unica Group, through its AN Group, participates in a food innovation project, with 1,600M€
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) has chosen the winning European consortium in the Food4Future call to lead EIT Food. This consortium will develop pioneering initiatives of innovation and education to promote the construction of sustainable chains of food supply in which the consumer will have a leading role.
EIT Food is made up of 50 companies, including the AN Group, universities and research centers, leaders in their field and covering the entire value chain, representing a wide range of European Union countries and associated countries
This consortium, after a year and a half of work in the preparation of the proposal, has been chosen so that in the next seven years develop some lines of work indicated in the proposal on innovation, knowledge and education.
With consumers as agents of change, EIT Food partners are committed to jointly transforming the way in which we currently produce, distribute and consume our food
In addition, this initiative will provide a unique competitive advantage to the European food industry, which currently has 44 million jobs.
The partners of EIT Food will invest about 1.2 billion euros, which will add another 400 million euros funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)
Four innovation programs will be launched to address the following social challenges:
1. Personalized Healthy Food (FoodConnects Assistant).
2. Development of a consumer-oriented supply chain and adoption of new technologies in food processing and distribution (Your Fork2Farm).
3. The digitization of the food system (The Web of Food)
4. Resource-efficient processes, converting the food industry at the spearhead to transform the current linear “produce-use-eliminate” model into a circular bio-economy model (The Zero Waste Agenda)
This large initiative, based in Belgium, is based on five nodes established in the project and based in Leuven (with partners in Belgium, France and Switzerland), Munich (with partners in Germany and the Netherlands), Reading (with partners In the United Kingdom, Iceland and Ireland), Warsaw (with partners in Poland and Finland) and Madrid (with partners in Spain, Italy and Israel).
Unica Group and AN Group
Unica Group and Grupo AN culminated at the beginning of this campaign the integration process that turns the resulting cooperative into the first in Spain by volume of turnover with 1 billion euros, 300 in fresh fruits and vegetables, placing it in the 46th position European level. It links 150 agricultural cooperatives in 17 provinces of Aragon, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Extremadura, La Rioja, Navarre and Basque Country, as well as the provinces of Almería, Granada and Murcia.
Both cooperatives have agreed to create the company Unica Fresh, which will be managed by Unica, for the marketing of fruits and vegetables in the fresh markets of the whole group
Source: Unica Group
