Bread is among the top 3 wasted food globally, with hundreds of tons being discarded daily. Unsold breads are returned to bakeries from retail outlets at the end of the day despite being fit for consumption, as customers prefer to purchase freshly baked over day old produce. These breads are redistributed to charitable organisations, sold as animal feed or disposed, this providing minimal or no value to bakeries. This technology is a method to convert market surplus bread into a probiotic beverage with zero waste generated. It presents a sustainable alternative for creating a circular economy by transforming surplus bread that will otherwise be discarded into a high-value product for bakeries or drinks manufacturers. Upcycling surplus bread also reduces its impact on the environment, as bread is a perishable product that can cause pollution if not disposed properly.  

Wine production has been a regional business near vineyard. Nevertheless, it is highly dependent on the geographical and climate of an area, for places where climate is not suitable for the growth of wine grapes, production of grape wine is costly or unavailable. On the other hand, tropical countries with ample production of a variety of fruits have to deal with wastage and economical loss as unsold fruits rotten. Dragon fruit (also known as pitaya or pitahaya) is a widely cultivated in many Southeast Asian countries. It is commonly consumed fresh or used for juice and puree production. The processing of dragon fruit into clear juice is difficult on an industrial scale due to its significant content of mucilaginous polysaccharide substances present in the flesh. The present invention seeks to address these problems by providing a method to produce a dragon fruit-derived alcoholic beverage using non-Saccharomyces yeasts fermentation. The resultant red dragon fruit beverage has lower alcohol concentration, appealing red-purple colour, pleasant fruity taste and aroma with a high concentration of natural antioxidants from the flesh pigment (betalains).

In Singapore, at least 30 tonnes of okara are generated daily and discarded as food waste or recycled as an animal feed.  Despite its richness in nutrients, the reuse of okara as human food is limited due to high amount of indigestible fibre and low palatability.  The team has developed a cost-effective enzymatic and fermentaion techniques to transform okara as a functional ingredient for applying into food innovations.

A faster, sustainable plant extraction method that is column-less and a zero-waste processing method, validated at pilot extraction scale. The method is non-ethanol based that optimizes the yield of bioactives from botanicals. This continuous cyclical extraction methodology has been validated at one tonne production scale to yield plant extracts of higher bioactive purity at a fraction of current production time & cost. As only food grade, non-ethanol based, solvent is used, extracted ingredients are Halal-certifiable. The method uses one process to extract the volatile components of botanicals after the extraction of minute amount of non-volatile bioactives, reaping two or more products with minimal or zero waste generation. This methodology is also able to recover plant proteins/soluble fibre, from spent grains & homogenous plant waste generated by the food & agricultural industry, for transformation into high value functional ingredients. In summary, this technology addresses two market challenges in the Food Industry: 1. The high cost & complexity of current column chromatography-based extraction limiting mass market access to quality plant extracts. 2. High wastage of food processing side-streams in the food processing & agricultural industry. These side-streams are currently dried up, at high energy cost, into low value animal feed and fertilizers. Recovering of plant proteins/soluble fibre from these side-streams provides an alternate source of quality plant extracts for development into mass market friendly functional food & supplements, while reducing the energy cost of disposing of these side-streams

Company’s patent-pending technology upcycles by-products and solid food waste into high-protein high fiber ingredients. Company’s process was tested at the University of Minnesota, scalability tests resulted in investment from manufacturing partner Cereal Docks. 50% protein concentrate and 35% protein flour showcased at trade shows in 2018 resulted in pilot trials and the following investment from Barilla and Amadori, and won AgFunder Innovation Award 2019.