#	Pagina
attuale pagina	/open-h2020/projects/216852/results.html

Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Is it fresh (Is it fresh. Keeping it fresh digitally)

Teaser

Summary

From all the food produced worldwide, approximately one third is wasted. A significant share of this wastage happens at the retail level, yet end consumers, inefficient logistic processes and improper storage in the value chain also bear a contribution. As a consequence, there are increasing government efforts and initiatives on the EU level and elsewhere in order to cut the amount of food waste.
We believe that in order to overcome this issue, one requires low-cost tracking capabilities to enable all the participants along the food value chain, from food producers to logistic companies, retailers, and customers, to track single food items and monitor the product freshness. Among the monitored parameters, there shall be not only the manufacturing date and the temperature but also additional biochemical parameters providing product\'s actual freshness status in real time. Continuous monitoring of these parameters allows for an estimation of a dynamic expiry date. Nowadays, a product often spends most of its lifetime in transit or storage, actual freshness monitoring during these stages is still missing.
Is it fresh wireless sensor technology (www.is-it-fresh.com) will enable affordable food freshness data on a single packaging unit scale. Every package will be able to communicate with external readout devices wirelessly and report its freshness status for the product inside in real time. This will provide each partner in the food value chain with unique and wirelessly accessible data about product\'s current freshness status as well as origin and transport logs. In addition, it will give the end customer a valuable insight into the freshness status of their food products and an actual dynamic expiry date, for example, by addressing the sensors via a fridge or smart shelf.
The goal of the SME Instrument Phase 2 funded project is to validate the technology in the market through pilot projects with potential industrial customers. The major challenge for conducting pilot tests in the food industry is the amount of prototypes/demonstrators required for such a test. As a rule, unit numbers of 100 or 1,000 are required. In order to manufacture this number of freshtag prototypes and conduct the pilot projects, a pilot manufacturing system is being designed and developed. The system will allow for manufacturing of 100 million freshtag units a year at a cost of several cents. The pilot manufacturing system will be accompanied by a quality control monitoring system including electrical and optical inspection units as well as a calibration units for on-wafer mass-calibration of sensors.
For the realization of the pilot projects, industrial NFC readers are also being developed that enable a variety of B2B scenarios such as readout on a conveyor belt or on retail shelves in a supermarket. At last, a cloud system is being optimized to handle an increasing number of database queries from a large number of freshtags working simultaneously.
To summarize, the 4 main objectives included in the project are:
1. Development of a pilot manufacturing system:
2. Optimization of the freshtag manufacturing process:
3. Pilot validation with industrial customers:
4. Development of the commercialization strategy and an innovation business plan:

Work performed

During the first reporting period covering the time between the project start on 1st June 2018 and till 31st May 2019, extensive work has been carried out according to the work plan defined in the Gran Agreement to achieve the set objectives.
The pilot manufacturing line concept has been prepared and the required equipment and manufacturing partners to support the manufacturing of 100 million freshtag units per annum at the lowest possible manufacturing cost to date have been identified. To achieve the several cent manufacturing cost objective, the design of the production monitoring system, including inspection and calibration systems, has been completed. Iterative improvements in the inspection and calibration systems are further planned after the pilot runs with manufactured freshtags will be completed.
In parallel to the planning of the pilot manufacturing system, the first trial batches of freshtags have been manufactured, going over several generations and continuously improving productâ€™s characteristics. Using the first batches of manufactured freshtag prototypes, first pilot projects have been conducted in order to assess the performance of the entire is it fresh platform (freshtags, smart readout, and IT/cloud).
Furthermore, for the sake of better identifying and understanding the minimal product requirements and finding the market fit as well as properly positioning the technology on the market through publicity, is it fresh team has undertaken a large amount of communication and dissemination activities including trade fairs, pitch competitions, government meetings as well as start-up accelerators. Based on the insights from these meetings as well as our own independent research, an interim Business Innovation Plan has been prepared.

Final results

Overall, during the first 12 months of the project, we have successfully developed a pilot manufacturing concept for freshtags and manufactured a few smaller batches of current freshtag generation. With those test batches, together with our pilot project partners, we were able to show the feasibility of technology in the field on a small scale. Large manufacturing batches and large pilot projects are to follow in accordance with the defined project plan.
We have defined Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP), a special packaging system that involves changing the gaseous atmosphere surrounding a food product inside a package to ensure product freshness and a longer shelf life, as our first go-to-market product.
Is it fresh has demonstrated a worldwide first digital NFC (Near Field Communication) sensor tag at a cost of several cents to measure freshness parameters of MAP-packaged products. This is a first and only solution of this kind that is eligible for integration into food packaging having a direct contact with food. We estimate that we can reduce the waste of MAP-packed products through a combination of a dynamic expiry date and dynamic pricing by 50% and thereby get margins of up to 75% depending on a specific product.
In the next steps, the pilot manufacturing will be established with newer generations of freshtags up until a complete design freeze. At this stage production yield optimization will be the main goal. Using larger manufacturing capabilities, follow-up pilot projects with larger freshtags quantities will be undertaken. In parallel, new potential pilot project partners will be acquired using marketing and dissemination activities in order to show the feasibility of the technology with other product types and in different segments of the food value chain. The ultimate goal is to validate the applicability of is it fresh technology for a wide range of products in order to tackle the socioeconomic problem of food waste through digitalization of single package and in-package freshness monitoring resulting in a dynamic expiry date.