Context
I4CE is an inter-regional partnership composed mainly by agri-food clusters to represent companies (mainly SMEs), researchers, innovators, economic developers, who are specialised in the agri-food sector, and more particularly in the production of innovative ingredients (nutritional, technical, functional), produced from bio-based raw materials (conventional, unconventional, new) or through new techniques valorising side streams (by-products/co-products) intended for food processing industry and non-food applications.
Exploring new routes to new ingredients, for new applications and uses, with new raw materials and new technologies, meeting new consumer needs, and complying with the circular economy principles. The building of a strong thematic network, with the necessary skills and competences, is essential to accelerate the development and commercialisation of novel and/or improved nutritional, technical and functional ingredients, while fostering cross-technology integration, cross-sectoral applications and circularity.
The goal of the S3 I4CE partnerships is to foster innovation and sustainability in the agri-food sector. The partnership strengthens the circularity by looking for new promising alternative ingredients and/or valorising side streams from the agri-food value chain into valuable ingredients for food, feed and other relevant sectors. This approach helps agri-food industries face challenges, improve efficiency in their production processes, optimize resource use, and utilize raw materials more effectively.
Year established: 2018
Mission
I4CE supports the development of innovative ingredients for cross sectoral applications, while fostering circularity.
The Partnership addresses 4 challenges:
- Emerging trends in food & drink consumption: requests for health benefits nutrition & improved nutritional balance; requests for natural products & organic foods, plant-based & green consumption; search for increased convenience.
- Industrial efficiency: agri-food industry & ingredients producing companies in particular need to reach higher efficiency, regarding key-aspects such as raw material utilisation, energy consumption, quality, safety & security, traceability, circularity and digital transformation.
- Circularity & sustainability: agri-food industry searches for better resources-efficient production systems, across the farm-to-fork chain, by valorising agrifood side-streams and by-products, by designing true circular strategies.
- Policy & regulations: innovating in the food sector is exposed to challenging regulatory matters, especially when new ingredients are produced by non-conventional technologies and from non-conventional side-streams.
Objectives
- Boosting the Economy: stimulating promising value chains in various thematic, sectorial, applications areas, supporting agri-food companies in their development while contributing to sustainable & circular food/non-food systems that meets the changing needs of the consumer. Accelerating the development of novel and/or improved biobased ingredients.
- Developing sustainable innovation: enabling access to new, innovative, nutritional, healthy, high added value and/or techno-functional ingredients and compounds, by valorising by-products, ensuring circularity of the agri-food ecosystem.
- Catalysing the Ecosystem: steering a dedicated community of stakeholders (Clusters, RTOs, SMEs, etc) active and interested by the I4CE value chains, a growing segment of the future of food and sustainable nutrition.
- Cooperating across Europe: bringing ideas, benchmarks, best practices, opportunities, partners & solutions to respond to critical industrial disruptions and societal challenges.
Shared smart specialisation areas
- Agri-Food supply chains of the future, incl. nutritional & functional ingredients
- Healthy food & ingredients
- Food safety, quality, traceability, high-quality AF industry
- Sustainable food products & systems
- Sea-related products
Tags
Food ingredients, nutrition, nutritional ingredients, functional ingredients, functional food, circular ingredients, sustainable food systems, circular bioeconomy, agri-food industry, valorisation of side-streams, bio-based by-products, upcycled agri-food waste, fermentation, plant-based proteins, techno-functional ingredients.
Regions (lead and partner)
- Leading regions: Wallonia (BE), Flanders (BE)
- Participating regions: Bretagne (FR), Normandy (F), Pays de la Loire (F), South Region (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur) (FR), Occitanie (FR), Corse (FR), Auvergne Rhône-Alpes (FR), Central Macedonia (EL), Emilia Romagna (IT), Galicia (ES), Navarra (ES)
Organisations involved
Partners:
- Wagralim (BE)
- Flanders'food (BE)
- Clust-ER Agro-Alimentare (IT)
- Clusaga (ES)
- Anfaco (ES)
- Valorial (FR)
- Innov'alliance (FR)
- ATE Cluster (EL)
- Region of Central Macedonia (EL)
- Nagrifood (ES)
- CNTA (ES)
- Smart Food Cluster (LT)
Associated Organisations:
- Wallonia: ULiège, Gembloux Agro Biotech, Smart Gastronomy Lab (SGL), UCLouvain, Celabor (RTO)
- Flanders: Food Pilot (pilot facility), ILVO (RTO), BBEPP (pilot facility)
- Emilia Romagna: ART-ER, University of Parma, University of Bologna (UNIBO), University Modena-Reggio Emilia
- Bretagne: UBO Rennes, Agro Rennes-Angers, Bretagne Développement Innovation (BDI)
- Galicia: National Technical Centre of Conservation Fisheries Products CECOPESCA, Meat Technology Centre Foundation CTC, Dairy and Food Technology Training and Research Centre APLTA, Centre for Research, Transference, and Innovation CITI, Universities of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Vigo (UV) e A Coruña (UDC)
- Sud-Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur: CTCPA (Pilot plant), Terralia senso (Sensory process and evaluation), Avignon University
- Central Macedonia: CERTH (RTO)
Related projects
B-Resilient (Euroclusters)
Biotech4Food (I3)
Contact
- Gus Verhaeghe: Gus.Verhaeghe@flandersfood.com
- Yuan Chai: yuan.chai@wagralim.be
- Betty Milano: betty.milano@wagralim.be
Latest news and upcoming events
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