The project “Innovate to Nourish” was launched this week in Bogotá, Colombia, with a conference and workshop supported by the HZero Innovation Hub for Latin America and the Caribbean of the World Food Programme and Siemens Colombia.

Blendhub’s HRI (Humanitarian and Resilience Investing) Initiative aims to promote collaboration among various stakeholders in the agri-food chain for the co-creation of agri-food solutions that facilitate the availability of nutritious, personalized, and affordable foods to more people in more places in favor of health and nutrition.

The “Innovate to Nourish” conference in Colombia will mark the beginning of collaborative food production, leveraging the potential of digital technology and a multi-localized infrastructure of hubs. This initiative aims to produce smarter, high-quality food products at more affordable prices for people in need.

The workshop sessions took place on April 23 and 24 in Bogotá, Colombia, where Blendhub operates a production hub, and were open to the participation of academics, representatives of public institutions and the private sector, startups, operators, and entrepreneurs in the agri-food sector, nutritionists, and other professionals related to the food industry.

Top-level speakers participated in the discussion, such as Dr. Andreas Blüthner, former Director of Nutrition at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Mary Luz Olivares Tenorio, Senior Food Scientist and Leader of Health and Nutrition Applications at Cenipalma, and Dr. Kemel Ghotme, Director of the Transnational Neuroscience Research Laboratory at Unisabana.

As you know, last week we were participating in CES Las Vegas, the most impactful technology event in the world, invited by Siemens, our technology partner.

As part of Siemens’ goal to unveil how their technological innovations are reshaping the consumer, retail, and food and beverage industries, we were invited to present our model of multi-localized portable plants, supported by their technology, to produce closer to raw materials and final consumers.

Our visionary business model, supported by Siemens’ cutting-edge technology, is helping companies from all around the world to accelerate innovation and access new markets.

At CES we presented our Full Meals project to feed more people in more places, especially in underserved communities. It is an example of how the multi-localization strategy enables us to ensure the provision of nutritious, sustainable and affordable food, while ensuring value creation and benefit for all parties involved. A committed yet profitable business model.

With more than 1,000 visitors to our stand showing great interest in our business, we have demonstrated our potential to transform the food industry. This will allow us to expand our collaboration with Siemens, which will open great opportunities for Blendhub, but also for our customers, partners and suppliers like you, who are part of our project.

47 grams of food powders can truly make an impact! 

Here is a short video of our amazing experience at CES 2024, PLAY IT! ⬇▶

Thank you for your trust. Let’s keep moving forward together!

CES is the most powerful tech event in the world, the proving ground for breakthrough technologies and global innovators.

Blendhub is participating in CES in Las Vegas, the world’s most important technology event, taking place from January 9 to 12. As part of the Siemens presence at CES, Blendhub is demonstrating how it is using Siemens technology to transform the global food system.

Blendhub was invited by Siemens to present its Food-as-a-Service model, which sets a new standard in efficient, sustainable food production, delivering tangible benefits for the industry. Enabled by Siemens technology, this approach actively creates a circular economy, benefiting local producers and communities, the environment and long-term economic sustainability.  

Blendhub is using Siemens’ Digital Twin technology to optimize food production and it is helping Blendhub achieve its goal of transforming food production in a more efficient and sustainable way, and to facilitate access to healthy and affordable food products to more people in more places.

At the Siemens booth at CES (Booth 10044 LVCC North Hall), Blendhub will showcase its global network of portable production plants, an initiative that the company has pioneered worldwide. Portable Powder Blending (PPB) Hubs are mini-Food and Beverage factories that can be sent and deployed anywhere in the world in a matter of weeks.

With all hubs connected to the cloud, food products and every single ingredient, and batch can be authenticated and monitored, enabling the perfect replication of recipes, anywhere.

Dave Taylor, VP of Industry Strategy and Marketing at Siemens Digital Industries Software said, “At CES 2024, Siemens is highlighting how customers like Blendhub are using the Siemens Xcelerator open digital business platform to transform how people live, work, play and make.  We hope to inspire many more people to embrace the power of Siemens technology like Blendhub has, so they can transform the everyday.”.

And Henrik Stamm Kristensen, Founder and CEO of Blendhub, states: “At the heart of Blendhub’s operations, supported by Siemens technology, is a deep-rooted commitment to sustainability. Blendhub’s localized production models minimize environmental impact and lead to significant cost savings, combining social accountability with economic benefits”.

Blendhub’s scalable cloud-based recipe development system is revolutionizing the food and beverage industry by fostering real-time collaboration, centralizing data storage, and empowering businesses to gain insights into recipe performance and ingredient costs, thus facilitating innovation and access to new markets, driving sustainability and positively impacting local communities.

Magnus Edholm, Aaron Frankel, Henrik Stamm Kristensen and Eduard Marfa.

As we finish another year, we look back on the milestones of 2023. At the top of our agenda has been a reorganization of Blendhub, focused on cultivating a team of top performers to drive short term profitable growth and improving everyday operations in coordination between local hubs and global teams. At the same time, we have been laying the strategic foundations on which we will grow our business rapidly over the next 3 to 5 years.

The food industry is ultra-dynamic and rapid innovation is forcing everyone to change our approach to business. We are adapting to these rapid changes by enhancing efficiency in all our operations, demanding better profitability, improving coordination in our network of hubs, and doubling down on our vision for shared value creation for our suppliers, customers, and other business partners.

To facilitate this change, we have structured the company into four business verticals in 2023, to help us position our current and future talent where they can create most value.

• Blendhub Blends & Services (known internally as 20/20) – operates our global network of hubs, ensuring existing customer satisfaction and new customer development, based on wide technical experience in various food segments shared across our network in tandem with local product adaptions. It offers functional blended solutions and industrial services. 

• Blendhub New Hub Deployments – focuses on expanding our capacity as required or building strategic alliances with customers, suppliers, and financial investors for local production.

• Innovation and Co-Creation – takes care of the design and development of new products combining our internal knowledge with new data sources, offering innovation services to both our internal Blendhub teams as well as other companies and entrepreneurs. It sits at the core of the digital and cultural transformation towards our vision of becoming a global Food-as-a-Service platform.

• Chemometric Brain – is a key tool for us to offer traceability and transparency of our raw materials and blended products, thanks to its use throughout our production network. Beyond Blendhub, they offer companies with better and cheaper testing solutions for quality control, leveraging NIRS to build solutions for any food segment.

We have also reinforced our management structure with the incorporation of top professionals with contrasted experience. José Luis Fernández, our new CFO, has a strong vision on financial control, turn-around and expansion, and has joined our executive committee. Also joining our management are Víctor Núñez, leading corporate development, and Guillermo Cánovas, leading our legal department.

WEF Top Innovator

A key milestone this year has been our participation in the Humanitarian and Resilience Challenge by UpLink, a platform promoted by the World Economic Forum. We were selected as one the 10 Top Innovators in this challenge for empowering employment and entrepreneurship in vulnerable communities and contributing to a positive social impact worldwide by leading the way in a global food system change.

This has opened new opportunities for us in a segment, Human Resilience, where we until now did not have broad recognition as a supplier. Serving humanitarian organizations and collaborating with governments brings us closer to our vision of making healthy and affordable food and personalized nutrition available to all people in all places, sustainably.

Leading the transformation in the food industry

Innovation and Co-Creation had a very interesting collaboration this year with EIT Food, an EU funded food innovation engine, for the Affordable Nutrition Scale Up Challenge. 10 European startups and scale ups were selected and economically awarded for their innovative ingredients or products contributing to the promotion of healthy and sustainable diets in Europe.

Through the project, we’ve been able to establish relationships with and learn from a group of young and innovative companies, with whom we are working to bring their ideas to market in the coming months.

When 1+1 is more than 2

Core to our strategy are the partnerships with value-aligned entrepreneurs and companies to create shared value. We’d like to highlight some partnerships signed this year:

• Indespan – producing and marketing novel bakery and pastry solutions
• Upfood – developing innovative and nutritious ingredients from food surplus
• Foodiq – collaborating on the development and production of alt protein based dairy alternatives
• ColoPlus – supporting their launch of nutraceutical food products using bovine colostrum.

And we’re off to a flying start in 2024, presenting at CES in Las Vegas in January, invited by our global technology partner Siemens.

As you can see, both our business and global relationships continue to grow and we believe this to be the key to accelerate transformation of the global food system to a more efficient and sustainable one, benefitting people and planet.

I want to thank all our suppliers, customers, and many other valuable relationships, both the organizations and the people, for their trust in Blendhub. We look forward to continuing to travel this path together.

Best wishes for health, peace, and success in the new year 2024.

Henrk Stamm Kristensen

Founder & Chief Moonshot Officer

If you operate in the plant-based beverage segment, you surely know this category has great potential for innovation, opening up new opportunities for food companies.

But to succeed in the dairy alternatives market you must strike a balance between taste, nutrition and cost. And that’s not always easy.

The global plant-based beverages market size was valued at USD 26.80 billion in 2022 and will expand further at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.1% from 2023 to 2030.

There are several reasons for the growth of this category: growing consumer awareness of health and well-being, the increase in lactose allergies and intolerances, the rise of vegan and flexitarian trends and greater concern for the environment, which leads to the search for more sustainable alternatives.

The trend is growing among the new generations. According to a research study conducted by British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) in January 2021, younger consumers aged between 18 and 40 years are more likely to choose a plant-based diet and are the primary promoter of plant-based beverage trends across the globe.

The segment is growing unstoppably, but what are the challenges?

Taste is a key barrier to dairy-alternative users. Cow’s milk still enjoys extensive usage among consumers who regard its taste, affordability and versatility as important qualities. As an example, in the UK, 64% of adults claim that cow’s milk tastes good, while only 23% of consumers think the same about coconut milk.

Therefore, achieving a pleasant taste and texture, as close as possible to cow’s milk, is one of the main challenges. But there is more: lowering costs to make products more accessible to more people and achieving an adequate nutritional profile -which is key for flexitarian consumers- and a clean label, since consumers are becoming more informed and are looking for healthy and sustainable products.

Blendhub, with extensive experience in plant-based product solutions, has developed a novel solution for plant-based beverages with high dairy flavor.

With a plant-based powder (oat, soy, coconut, dairy flavorings), a milk-like profile in terms of taste is achieved in a reduced fat formula.

The result is a drink:

• 100% plant-based origin.
• Lactose free.
• Without seals or legends.
• No dyes.
• Gluten free.
• With protein.
• Easy adaptation and customization according to customer needs, with the possibility of adding calcium, vitamins and minerals.

Thanks to Blendhub’s expert team of formulators, the formula is adapted to the needs of the manufacturer and its consumers anywhere in the world. And with the support of the network of multi-localized production hubs on 3 continents, Blendhub can optimize raw material sourcing, logistics… and reduce production costs, thus making products more affordable and accessible to more consumers in more places.

Blendhub participó la pasada semana en The Food Tech, el mayor punto de encuentro de Latinoamérica para profesionales y empresas de la industria alimentaria. Después de tres años de parón por la pandemia, la feria ha sido un éxito de público con más de 18.000 asistentes.

Los equipos de Blendhub en México y Colombia han presentado las últimas innovaciones alimentarias y casos de éxito locales e internacionales, todo ello bajo la estrategia de Food-as-a-Service, con la que ayudamos a cualquier empresa alimentaria a lanzar nuevos productos en menos de 90 días.

En The Food Tech, Blendhub ha destacado por sus innovaciones en las categorías de plant-based e ingredientes funcionales. Hemos presentado nuestra innovadora mezcla para pan proteico, bebidas naturales hidratantes en polvo, queso crema y crema ácida de origen vegetal y cereales infantiles, entre otros.

En Blendhub conseguimos dar respuesta a las nuevas tendencias de consumo globales  (salud, sostenibilidad, etiqueta limpia, reducción de azúcar, etc…) con unos productos innovadores y óptimos en cuanto a características funcionales y sensoriales, que conquistan a los consumidores por su sabor y textura.

Durante los dos días del evento, Blendhub ha consolidado relaciones con sus clientes clave en la región, salimos reforzados como plataforma tecnológica y de servicios para la industria alimentaria, líderes en innovación gracias a nuestra red de formuladores expertos en la adaptación de ingredientes y recetas a los gustos y hábitos locales en cualquier parte del mundo.

El éxito de nuestra participación en The Food Tech ha sido posible gracias a la dedicación y el compromiso de nuestros equipos en México y Colombia, que han trabajado muy intensamente en los últimos meses para preparar esta cita clave para el negocio de Blendhub en Latinoamérica.

Blendhub will participate in the first edition of the Ftalks Food Summit in Mexico. The leading event on food innovation in Spain crosses the ocean and will be held for the first time in Latin America, where food tech is booming, which involves greater growth opportunities for food companies in this region. Blendhub, with an important commercial presence in the region and two Food-as-a-Service hubs in Mexico and Colombia, has been invited to present their innovative business model based on localization of production, closer to raw materials and final consumers. This strategy allows us to help companies to produce anywhere in the world in a more efficient and sustainable way while creating local value. Eduardo Aldasoro, Regional Managing Director Americas for Blendhub, will participate in Ftalks Food Summit in Mexico in the round table: Reformulating mass consumption: healthier, more sustainable and delicious products. He will explain how Blendhub’s localized model facilitates tailor-made solutions for food manufacturers, adapting recipes to local consumers, ensuring more efficient business strategies and more sustainable food products. The event will be held at Torre Diana in Mexico City on September 1 and 2. Numerous startups from the region will attend and exhibit their products and technologies in a ‘future market’.  The congress will bring together top industry leaders from around the globe.

During its annual meeting in Davos – the focal point for leaders to accelerate the partnerships needed to tackle global challenges and shape a more sustainable and inclusive future-, the World Economic Forum released a paper that calls for new collaboration between organizations, businesses, investors and entrepreneurs to attract the investment needed to strengthen fragile communities and unleash sustainable social impact. And Blendhub has been selected as one of the world organizations with the capacity and strategic thinking needed to develop sustainable solutions to make a difference to the lives of nearly 1 billion people living in fragile and conflict-affected settings worldwide: “Blendhub focuses on creating sustainable and transparent supply chains that ensure shared value creation by connecting local farmers to entrepreneurs and food brands across global supply chains. In a decentralized winner shares it all approach to doing business, it dedicates a certain amount of capacity at each hub to social collaboration and sustainable food design for underserved communities”. “It takes more than a single intervention to unleash transformational change in complex ecosystems. To truly leverage the potential for positive and sustainable social impact while meeting investor demand for returns, new ways of collaboration across sectors are needed,” said Børge Brende, President of the World Economic Forum. Henrik Stamm Kristensen, Founder and Chief Moonshot Officer at Blendhub, states: “This is what we at Blendhub have been claiming for decades as we were pioneers in creating a multilocalized network of food production hubs on 4 continents, closer to raw materials, creating local value and making healthy and safe food products available to more people in more places”. This discussion paper is an evolution of the work initiated by the Forum’s Humanitarian and Resilience Investing (HRI) Initiative, which was launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019. The IKEA foundation is a partner of this initiative. Over the next three years the partnership will develop innovative business models and investments that strengthen local economies and increase the self-reliance and resilience of the most vulnerable communities and economies. Download the discussion paper