Home › Partners

Flanders' FOOD

Flanders' FOOD is the innovation platform for the Flemish food industry. As a platform, it brings together the industry, the research institutes and the governmental agencies.

The added value for the main stakeholders will be:

  • for the industry: innovation stimulation - research should have an economic relevance - new products, cheaper processes, new markets, ...
  • for the government: improved competition, increase in gross domestic product (GDP), ...
  • for the consumer: improved health status of foods, ...

The mission of Flanders' FOOD is "to strengthen the competitivity of the food sector through stimulation of scientific and technological innovation". Our focus is on "healthy, balanced and tasty food products of tomorrow", controlling  the caloric intake, nutritional value and optimising health promoting effects.

Within this central theme, 4 basic dimensions are important and will be investigated:

  • Interaction between functional ingredients and food components
  • Interactions by processing: conventional and new processing technologies
  • Nutritional stability and shelf life: (micro)-biological, (bio)-chemical and physical stability
  • Sensory characteristics: flavour, taste, texture and colour.

Our mission will be realised through the following main goals of Flanders' FOOD:

  • Knowledge development: start up of collective research projects in collaboration with research institutes. The projects are industry driven, marked-pulled, application oriented and will generate generic results. Research should preferable be multidisciplinary.
  • Knowledge transfer: broad dessimination of (existing and newly acquired) knowledge. A technology watch system will be implemented in which technological/scientific inventions, patents, publications will be presented. Seminars, workshops and training coarses are being organised.
  • Commercialisation of research results: the food industry should be able to effectively use and implement the results in their product and process innovation.

Examples of research projects are: fat-, sugar- and salt reduction and replacement, prolongation of the physicochemical and microbiological stability/shelf life of food products, ...

Flanders' FOOD is a membership organisation with approximately 200 industrial members and 30 research groups (situation at the end of 2008). The target groups are regional, national and international companies from the food industry but also from other industrial sectors (animal feed, technology providers, ...). Both SMEs and large enterprises can join.

The benefits for the industry are:

  • Participation to the collective research projects, based on the need of the industry
  • Participation to seminars, workshops and training coarses at reduced rates
  • Individual support on scientific/technological matters, problems, innovation subsidies, ...
  • Access to the Science and Technology Watch newsletter
  • Access to a database with the expertise and competence of the research institutes in the Flanders and in surrounding countries. Data on knowledge and infrastructure are included.
  • Regional, national and international networking: through FoodSpot, Flanders' FOOD is now linked to the industry, the research institutes and the governmental agencies in the Netherlands and Nord Rhine Westphalia