Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on solutions for the food industry. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we decided to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 5 promising 3D food printing startups.
Heat Map: 5 Top 3D Food Printing Startups
Using our StartUs Insights Platform, covering 1.116.000+ startups & emerging companies, we looked at innovation in the field of FoodTech. For this research, we identified 46 relevant solutions and picked 5 to showcase below. These companies were chosen based on a data-driven startup scouting approach, taking into account factors such as location, founding year, and technology among others. Depending on your specific criteria, the top picks might look entirely different.
The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 startups & emerging companies developing 3D food printing solutions. Moreover, the Heat Map reveals regions that observe a high startup activity and illustrates the geographic distribution of all 46 companies we analyzed for this specific topic.
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Redefine Meat – 3D Printing Animal-Free Meat
Increasingly, global meat consumption is under attack for significantly contributing to global emissions. This drives demand for innovations in technology to provide suitable alternatives for meat. Startups are working to ensure that the appearance, taste, texture, and flavor of 3D printed meat matches closely with the current meat-eating experience.
Israeli startup Redefine Meat creates animal-free meat with the help of Redefine Meat technology. Combining 3D meat modeling, food formulations, and food printing technology, the startup produces meat substitutes that have the appearance, texture, and flavor of different animal meats. In addition to using only sustainable and natural ingredients, the meat alternative is also more affordable than animal meat and contains no cholesterol.
3 Desserts Graphiques – 3D Printing Desserts
Intricate designs and shapes always add to the visual appeal of desserts like cakes and chocolate. Traditionally, the final stage of cake-baking takes a considerable amount of time. Advancements in technology circumvent the manual effort and allow for machines or robots to complete the icing and decorating tasks. 3D food printing also provides higher throughput, even when working with complex designs. Emerging companies work on food printing solutions, especially for cakes and pastries.
French startup 3 Desserts Graphiques manufactures 3D printers for desserts. The printer is based on Staubli’s robotics technology and is capable of creating and decorating desserts and savories with chocolate. This 3D food printer allows for personalization and, additionally, conforms to CE regulations regarding health, safety, and environmental standards.
byFlow – 3D Food Design Platform
Fine dining, special occasions, and public events usually involve a small batch production of various meal courses. Consistency in quality and visual appeal adds value to the overall food experience. With 3D printers, restaurants are able to prepare multiple desserts using various food ingredients, resulting in higher revenues. This also provides opportunities for startups creating the backend software capabilities and designs that eventually get printed as food.
Dutch startup byFlow develops 3D food printing technology for chefs, restaurants, and caterers. The startup’s web-based platform helps customers in the creation of 3D food designs, where users choose everything from the ingredients. Further, the platform has a repository of ready-to-print recipes as well. Some ingredients on offer include chocolate, fondant, ganache, and marzipan.
BeeHex – 3D Baking Decoration Equipment
Large-scale confectionaries utilize complete production lines to create the final baked goods. While technological advancements enable various levels of automation, the capability to use different ingredients to 3D print elements of a dish is revolutionizing the food industry. Startups develop innovative solutions to commercialize the printing of baked goods and confectionaries.
The US-based startup BeeHex delivers food preparation and personalization solutions by employing an advanced 3D printing and robotics system. The startup enables high-speed food personalization with scalable systems which, depending on the customer’s requirement, identifies and executes variable shapes on the surface of baked items. This solution works by combining pick-and-place robots with advanced vision systems.
Shiyin Technology – 3D Food Printer
Cooking full-fledged meals require more effort and in these situations, chefs appreciate all the help they can find. 3D food printing allows cooks to create food designs and customized recipes with shorter turnaround times. Startups, with the help of additive manufacturing technology, reduce the effort and cooking time while ensuring quality, consistency, and precision, as well as aesthetics.
Chinese startup Shiyin Technology provides consumer-grade 3D food printers. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), the startup’s 3D food printer automatically verifies the input recipes against a cloud-based repository and then begins printing. Foodbot S2 finds applications in rapid prototyping of food as well as for research and development (R&D) of ingredients. While all the products have temperature control in real-time, they also provide support for multiple terminals like personal computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
What About The Other 41 Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence so you can achieve your goals faster. The 5 3D food printing startups showcased above are promising examples out of 46 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria, get in touch.
