ValgOrize Valorisation of algae for a better taste
To maintain current consumption trends, the world must produce 50-70% more food by 2050. Current global algae biomass production is 3M tonnes. In the EU, however, only 0.1 tonne is cultivated with 9% for food, compared to 90% globally. Many EU countries allow wild harvesting of seaweed, an unsustainable practice with low quality yields. Imports of (Asian) algae do not meet EU food safety standards.
Key challenge
The key challenge: ‘Controlled sustainable production and processing of high quality, stable, safe algal biomass of known composition with important food features and a good total palatability including: taste, aroma, colour and texture’, in order to facilitate change in favour of food from the lower trophic regions in the ocean food chain and investment in the sector. Food producers need a reliable and predictable supply of high quality biomass and consumers want tasty, safe and high quality products. The EU project ValgOrize will close this gap.
Overall objective
- Increase innovation within the agro-food and marine technology smart specialisation sectors occurring across the entire value chain. This enhances tech transfer mainly to SMEs.
- Establish an expertise centre/platform that integrates all innovations and improvements (growth, processing, profiling, marketing).
- Increase insight into consumer acceptance of algae products, thus closing the gap between different stakeholders (i.e. food producers and consumers)
- Gain insight into the investment needed to scale up algae production from pre-commercial (TRL7) to commercial (TRL9) scale (via developed investor’s roadmap)
Main output
Increased capacity of members of the 2-Seas region to produce reliable, consistent streams of high quality algal biomass and to process it for food, and facilitate emergence and growth of a new sector within the food industry that produces food products sustainably from algae.
For more information about this project and the collaborating groups of participants (12 parties from 4 countries), visit the website of Interreg 2 Seas.
Meet the team
