New food

Meeting consumer demand for nutritious, sustainable and ethical food

The emerging ‘new foods’ sector is creating alternatives to traditional agriculture that can produce environmentally more sustainable, healthy, safe and affordable sources of nutrition for billions of people around the world. Potential types of new foods include insect-derived proteins, plant-based meat alternatives, cultivated meats, and cell-derived enzymes, proteins, fats and other nutrients and functional molecules.

New food - people enjoying a meal
GEA expertise for your new foods journey

Here at GEA we’re combining our industry, technology and engineering expertise to support our customers conceive, develop and scale-up sustainable and commercially viable processes for generating new foods. Whether you are an R&D organization, industry start-up, or an existing food processor diversifying into the new food sector, our technologies can help you to create and realise exciting, commercially viable opportunities. We believe our technologies can play an enabling role in the global drive to secure sustainably sourced and produced nutrition that will help to keep populations around the world healthy, while reducing stresses on our natural environments.

A global focus on safe, secure nutrition for all

At its foundation, new food embraces the basic principle and goal of feeding more people using fewer resources. One key focus is on reducing reliance on livestock-based agriculture, reducing waste, and reducing other stresses on the environment by harnessing new sources and production methods for generating plant-based dairy alternatives, alongside proteins, protein-rich foods, and other key nutrients.

Here are some examples of 'new food' types:

GEA expertise for the new food industry

Our customers in the alternative-protein space benefit from GEA’s expertise in just about every type of food and beverage process, from dairy to brewery. We also have parallel knowhow and experience in the pharma processing sector, which we can leverage alongside our broad fermentation and engineering expertise to support developments in the rapidly expanding field of precision fermentation and recombinant proteins. 

Dedicated test centers of excellence

At the dedicated GEA New Food Application and Technology Center of Excellence (ATC), and other GEA technology test centers around the world our expertise can assist with process design and configuration, and scale up. We’ll sit down with you and take the time to understand your project and goals, and then work with you to create and test equipment, systems and potentially complete process lines for products as diverse as insect proteins, cell-based milk or recombinant enzymes.

Our expertise in fermentation extends beyond just physical bioreactors and equipment. We use the latest computational fluid dynamics-based digital tools and to help understand and predict cell behavior and yield under different bioreactor conditions, and provide engineering expertise for scale-up. We can help you optimize your process with a view to generating industrial processes for generating exciting, healthy and tasty new foods that can be accessible to populations around the world. 

A focus on energy- and resource-efficient processes

Here at GEA we’re striving to develop components, systems and digital tools that can help our customers reduce energy and resource use, recycle, and reduce waste and carbon footprint. So we’ll always suggest options and upgrades that could help you to achieve your own sustainability goals, and secure reliable, robust and high quality processing, 24/7. 

Not sure where to start? Just contact us, and let’s get talking. 

 
Figure 2: The new technology center will be used to evaluate processes for the production of new food on a transferable pilot scale as well as to test production using cell cultures and microbial fermentation in conjunction with upstream and downstream process steps. Image: GEA/Mike Henning

GEA New Food ATC

The New Food Application and Technology Center of Excellence (ATC) has been established as a central hub to support innovation in the emerging field of cellular agriculture.

#FoodforThought

The new food shortcut

On tomorrow’s menu: Dairy products made from fermented milk cells. Chicken breast filet produced in a bioreactor. Or food that is sourced literally out of thin air.

GEA will build Novozymes’ new plant to produce alternative products for the human nutrition turnkey. This order in the growing “New Food” market is one of the largest orders in the company’s history.

GEA wins one of the largest orders in the company’s history in "New Food"

Biotechnology customer Novozymes chooses GEA technology for a new functional protein plant in Nebraska, USA.

With its new pilot plant Aker BioMarine will manufacture INVI, a sustainably sourced krill protein hydrolysate that was recently classified as food safe. Image: Aker BioMarine

GEA to build world's first pilot plant for the production of krill protein

On behalf of Aker BioMarine, GEA is to design and deliver the world’s first pilot plant for hydrolyzing krill protein.

Pass the protein, please

Pass the protein

The alternative protein market is diversifying and growing quickly, given massive consumer and industrial demand.

Hunting the flexitarian

Hunting the flexitarian

Casual vegetarianism, known as the flexitarian diet, has exploded as a lifestyle.

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GEA explores potential of insect protein for animal feed

GEA has been working with an Australian start-up to explore the potential of sustainable protein for animal feed.

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