Blendhub and Upfood partner to develop ingredients and products from food surpluses
Blendhub will work with Upfood on its novel (patent pending) solar powered fruit and vegetable dryer converting upcycled surplus fruit and vegetables into nutritious plant-based ingredients for the food industry.
The sustainable and very low production cost standard model has the capacity to dry 1Mt per day of fresh fruits and vegetables. However, the dryer capacity can be scaled and customised to a capacity from 50 kg/day suitable for small-holder farmers to 10MT per day for industrial production. This dryer can be deployed at post-harvest level and also in any production plant as a drying unit prior to the processing into powder.
Through a CO2 neutral drying process, this system produces high quality dried products like industrial dryers. The drying system has been tested in Almeria (Spain) by the Danish Technological Institute.
Upfood, a Danish company led by entrepreneur Sajjad Haider, prides itself on offering technological solutions that have low capex and opex, easy to implement and use and more sustainable than other existing solutions.
This concept is suited to Blendhub’s business model, which seeks to produce more efficiently and sustainably to make nutritious and affordable products available to more people in more places.
The collaboration helps Blendhub incorporate a new strategic partner to its food-as-a-service platform, which focuses on supporting professionals and companies, from start-ups or small-medium enterprises to large ingredients and food industries, from ideation to market launch of food products.
Blendhub also said the collaboration with Upfood will help the sourcing of plant-based raw materials for the development of new ingredients and affordable food products, while fighting food waste
