The 2026 startups tackle scalable food-waste reduction, nutrition and food safety — including tools and technologies relevant to dairy processors.
FoodNavigator has announced the 10 finalists for its Global Food Tech Awards (GFTA) EMEA heat — startups tackling food-waste reduction, nutrition and food safety, themes that also touch dairy: from food-safety and recall-management platforms to freezing of perishables and alternative proteins, FoodNavigator reports.
Judges assessed entrants on scalability, sustainability, novelty, market fit and «star quality»; the EMEA winner will be announced at the Future Food-Tech London summit on 24–25 September 2026.
The top 10 (alphabetical)
- AuditQ — AI food-safety compliance, cutting audit prep from weeks to days.
- Betta Choc — upcycles date seeds into a cocoa alternative via fermentation.
- EatPol — AI consumer insights plus at-home testing to predict launch success (40 countries).
- Enbiosis Biotechnology — digital-twin and AI functional formulations. Its en-TEAR supplement targets eye health via the gut-eye axis.
- Friday4:30 — real-time incident management for recalls and supply-chain disruptions.
- Hemisphere Technologies — solvent-free hemp protein. Its Hemp Pro 2000 is 65% plant protein with all nine amino acids.
- Hüüp Coffee — turns low-grade and surplus beans into specialty coffee via fermentation.
- iCook — AI personalised nutrition (meal plans, recipes, grocery lists).
- Proton Europe — advanced freezing using ultra-low temperatures and electromagnetic fields to cut waste.
- UPP — upcycles broccoli stalks and stems into protein, fibre and functional ingredients.
The judges
The GFTA EMEA judges are Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro (Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, Imperial College London), Florian Viton (VP, Global Science & Technology Foods, Unilever), Joanna Trewern (director, ProVeg International), Rosie Wardle (partner and co-founder, Synthesis Capital) and Deniz Ataman (deputy editor, FoodNavigator-USA).
Source: FoodNavigator
