European Innovation Council invests in Swiss food-tech company

SWITZERLAND – SwissDeCode, a Swiss food-tech company, has secured an investment of EUR 1 million (USD 1,164,850) funding from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, complementing the EIC Accelerator Grant previously awarded to the company.

The start-up, which provides rapid and on-site food certification, is attracting investors from the global food and agricultural technology panorama who actively support continuous advancements in the food supply chain.

“The investment will be used to drive our growth in customer acquisition and new product development. In addition, as a Board member, we will leverage the network of the European Innovation Council,” said Brij Sahi, Chief Executive Officer & Co-founder, SwissDeCode.

Food sustainability, safety, and authenticity have been increasingly under the spotlight, as the industry is required to improve its processes efficiency to feed a growing population of more demanding consumers, according to FoodTechBiz.

As a provider of innovative food quality monitoring solutions, SwissDeCode has raised the interest of global investors looking for breakthroughs in the food industry. Current members of the board include VisVires New Protein and EIT Food as board observers.

With the addition of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, SwissDeCode believes it is bringing the right expertise on board, allowing the company to put its growth strategy in place while taking the needs of consumers and companies, and investors into account.

“I am pleased to announce the EIC Fund is supporting SwissDeCode to build its innovative technology on food safety, monitoring and control in an innovative way, helping farmers and food manufacturers in identifying undeclared and undesired ingredients, viruses and contaminants,” said José Fernando Figueiredo, EIC Fund Investment Committee member.

He highlighted that the investment portrays the EIC Fund commitment to helping companies in tackling global challenges and co-investing with other partners in promising solutions for the future.

To help its customers communicate the quality of their A2 products to the market, SwissDeCode offers a service package that includes the unique A2 INSIDE label

SwissDecode’s innovative solutions

Since its establishment in 2016, SwissDeCode has been working with agri-food companies to understand their needs and fill the technology gaps.

One such innovation is the A2 Family of Tests, the world’s first line of on-site testing solutions that validates the authenticity of A2-type milk and customers are highly seeking that at the global level. A2 milk is a variety of cows’ milk that mostly lacks a form of β-casein proteins called A1, and instead has mostly the A2 form.

The technology was one of the 2021 World Dairy Innovation Awards finalists – Best manufacturing or technology innovation category.

In the same way, the company has developed an automatic, on-site device that brings rapid testing to companies dealing with large food volumes and throughput, such as border control agencies, commodity traders, logistic companies, or food processing plants. A pilot program with a large, global commodity trader is currently in place to validate and refine the platform’s usability.