Since I founded Premium Ingredients, a company specialized in functional food ingredient blends, constant innovation became one of our priorities, and this has been possible thanks to our external partners. Now, Premium Ingredients is integrated in Blendhub and we are immersed in new projects, again, made possible by external collaboration and Open Innovation practices.
Premium Blendhub is the first player of a new category of the agri-food industry, Smart Powder Blends, based on Open (open formula) and Anywhere, (powder blending anywhere in the world and anywhere in the value chain).
We consider Smart Powder Blends a very important innovation because they will equip of flexibility and transparency to an industry traditionally based on black boxes, optimizing the food powder value chain.
The agri-food business consists of agricultural enterprises, raw materials manufacturers, technology companies that design formulas (ingredients), final product manufacturers and clients. While raw material manufacturers are easily identified and recognized in the market, when it comes to companies that develop technological ingredients there are some nebulous and difficulties to define which is exactly what they do. Additionally, the agri-food business consists mainly of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) lacking sufficient technological ability to access raw materials and production processes they need to innovate and develop new products.
Smart Powder Blends are designed to fix this broken process and bring a change of scenery to the food industry by opening up the middle section of the food manufacturing chain; between the raw material producers and the food producers and the distributors. Currently, food producers are acquiring a “black box” formula, meaning they do not know exactly what they get for their money. Hence, they cannot evaluate the return on their investment, neither acquire new know-how. Smart Powder Blends means opening up the formula by licencing IP after a maximum of five years. In this way, companies will be able to make informed decisions, outsource ingredients and look for new partners partners aligned with their strategy and interests.
Also, portable blending will help optimize the value chain and react better to changes in the market by moving production to the raw materials’ location or avoiding difficulties in importing products such as duties or unstable political situations.
Apart from this project, external collaboration has helped us group part of the experience of these years in an Open Innovation platform, specialized in the food industry: Allfoodexperts. Our external network of partners enables us to launch projects such us Smart Powder Blends or Allfoodexperts so that we know that Open Innovation works and we want other companies in the industry to benefit from it through Allfoodexperts.
If you are interested in Smart Powder Blends, you can go to the website Smart Powder Blends or read this article by FoodNavigator.
