Happy Ocean Foods: EIT Food award
Happy Ocean Foods received funding from the EIT Food Impact Funding Framework programme for their project, ‘NUTRItious, sensory and texture optimised plant-based SEAfood (NUTRISEA)’. We heard from Robin Drummond, Co-founder & CEO, about the importance of the award, and their experience of collaborating with the Catalyze team towards the successful submission.
Robin Drummond, Happy Ocean Foods CEO & Co-founder.
Happy Ocean Foods aim to restore ecological balance in the oceans
Happy Ocean Foods (DE) is a leading foodtech startup in the space of plant-based seafood, focusing on utilising simple and functional ingredients to develop sustainable seafood alternatives. With a range of tasty and nutritious products HOF aims to restore the ecological balance in the oceans. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Munich, Germany, Happy Ocean Food takes an innovative approach to create plant-based, healthy, and sustainable fish substitutes, which are similar to animal products in texture, nutrient profile, taste, and appearance.
NUTRISEA
In their EIT Food project, NUTRISEA, Happy Ocean Food aims to optimise High Moisture Extrusion (HME) technology to produce plant-based (PB) fish. As a more cost-effective alternative to 3D printing, HME is widely used in PB meat production, but is not optimised to replicate the finer, lamellar structure of fish. Preliminary trials have shown that the right ingredients (e.g. faba bean and mycoprotein) and the right processing conditions (less harsh) are key for replicating fish texture and flavour.
“This funding enables us to secure further equity-free financing to bring protein-diversified and nutritious products to life.” Robin remarks.
Aligning with EIT Food’s missions and priorities for maximum impact
NUTRISEA aligns with EIT Food’s missions for Healthier Lives Through Food and a Net Zero Food System. Under the first mission, EIT Food aim for a material difference to quality of life by enabling more consumers to have better choices through access to affordable, healthier food products and actionable information, while under the latter, they aim to enable the transition to a net zero food system, measuring and quantifying the change through reduced CO2 equivalent emissions.
Specifically, the project aims to address EIT Food’s priority area, ‘Protein Diversification’, through enabling increased uptake of affordable, nutritious, sustainable food products targeting NCD risks in key markets & demographics.
Robin explains, “Our project addresses EIT Food’s priority of Protein Diversification by creating sustainable, nutritious, and affordable plant-based seafood alternatives that reduce CO2 emissions and support healthier consumer choices.”
Supporting Happy Ocean Foods with their submission
Catalyze provided support to Happy Ocean Foods during their development of the NUTRISEA project proposal to EIT Food. We are proud of our successful collaboration towards bringing this project to life.
Robin comments on HOF’s experience of the collaboration with Catalyze:
“Working with Catalyze was a highly collaborative and supportive experience, as their expertise was instrumental in successfully developing and submitting our NUTRISEA project proposal.”
Visit the Happy Ocean Foods to learn more: https://happyoceanfoods.com/en
Download the EIT Food Impact Funding Framework guide!
EIT Food’s Impact Funding Framework accelerates innovation to build a future-fit food system that produces healthy and sustainable food for all. Our EIT Food experts have prepared a guide covering all the the ins and outs of the programme, including eligibility & funding conditions, advice on building your consortium, and success stories and more.
EIT Food Impact Funding Framework programme guide
Making our food system future-proof: What is EIT Food?
European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Food is Europe’s leading food innovation community, connecting business, research and education to make Europe’s food system future-proof. It funds collaborative projects and market-ready solutions that improve health, sustainability and transparency across the food chain, accelerating innovations that deliver healthier diets, lower environmental impact and resilient food systems for everyone.
About Catalyze
At Catalyze we commit ourselves to accelerating innovations that have a positive impact on the world. We are the driving force for your innovations through our offering of strategic consulting services, funding consultancy, project management and more, which deliver impactful expertise for all development stages. With the highest quality in the industry, we aim to be the consulting partner of choice to drive the success of meaningful innovation projects.
