Food innovation incubator
Austria – led by FH Joanneum
Current situation requiring improvements
There’s currently no regional infrastructure where regional food chain actors can exchange on and find solutions to existing gaps with adequate support.
Main activities in FAIRCHAIN
Launch of an incubator programme that encompasses consulting, networking and prototyping of products, processes and technologies for intermediate food value chain actors
Progress to date
- The Food Innovation Incubator at FH JOANNEUM has been bringing together small farmers, scientists and food entrepreneurs of Austria’s Graz region. Together, they are developing innovative solutions for the management of fruit and vegetable co-products by scaling them up into unique regional products such as varietal apple sorbet, vegetable soup, freeze-dried tomatoes, and garlic paste.
- To promote knowledge transfer, the Food Innovation Incubator also offers trainings tailored to the needs of regional farmers (e.g., product prototyping) and access to the Food Processing Lab.
- New food trends that could favour the development of intermediate value chains such as the convenience products using local ingredients aimed at communal kitchens or life-cycle-oriented origin analysis are discussed during networking sessions.
Practice abstracts
Podcast
The podcast is in German. Automatic translation is available via YouTube.
The Food Innovation Incubator was presented at a workshop co-organised by CO-FRESH and FOODRUS
This week, FAIRCHAIN participated in the Innovations in Agri-Food workshop organised by the CO-FRESH and FOODRUS projects in Nitra, Slovakia. Hartmut Derler (FH JOANNEUM) shared the findings of the Food Innovation Incubator case study with presentations on...
Our project was presented at the STADTLANDBIO congress
FAIRCHAIN was represented at the 2022 edition of the STADTLANDBIO congress, which took place in Nürnberg from 27 to 28 July. During the round table "EU agricultural policy, world market, large corporations - how regional can agricultural and food policy really be?"...
Case study update: Jour Fixes at the Food Innovation Incubator
The Austrian case study started with the Food Innovation Incubator programme in September 2021. Two Open Food Jours Fixes took place since then. Jour fixes will have a defined agenda and take place three times a year in a virtual room. Each jour fixe starts with a...
The Austrian case study presented at ERSCP 2021
The Austrian case study was shared with the participants of the 2021 European Round Table on Sustainable Consumption and Production, which was held in Graz between 8 and 10 September 2021. During the session 'How will we eat?', case study leader FH JOANNEUM,...
Implementation workshop for the Austrian case study
Following a goal-defining meeting with regional stakeholders in April, FH JOANNEUM and Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research moderated a workshop to prepare the launch of an incubator programme bringing together fruit and vegetable stakeholders from...
Workshop: Food Innovation Incubator – Creating added value together
FAIRCHAIN partner FH JOANNEUM (Sustainable Food Systems research group at the Institute of Applied Production Sciences) hosted a workshop with food stakeholders of the Styrian region to prepare the launch of the future Food Innovation Incubator. The topics discussed...