10 New Food Manufacturing Companies and Startups to Watch in 2026

Executive Summary: Which are the Top 10 New Food Manufacturing Companies to Watch?

1. Nyska (India): Manufactures automated food processing machinery for honey, beeswax, and tomato production for improving efficiency, hygiene, and compliance in small-scale and industrial food operations.
2. Dinera (Ghana): Develops an AI-powered food safety platform with dynamic QR traceability for secure, sustainable, and transparent food chains.
3. NEXTIOSYS (Netherlands): Provides Internet of Things (IoT)-based milk monitoring sensors and software to track quality, detect contamination, and enhance dairy farm productivity.
4. Shelfion (Belgium): Offers AI-based shelf-life prediction software that models microbial growth to optimize product stability and minimize spoilage.
5. SafePlate Technologies (USA): Builds synthetic DNA biosensor devices to detect allergens and contaminants in real time for improved food safety and reduced recalls.
6. RecovLabs (Germany): Produces sustainable vegetable oils from upcycled coffee waste using green chemistry to cut GHG emissions and support circular production.
7. Delight Food (South Korea): Creates alternative meat using micro-dietary fiber control technology to replicate real meat texture with clean-label ingredients.
8. foodflou (Ireland): Delivers an AI-driven compliance management system for food manufacturers by automating audits, traceability, and quality control workflows.
9. Salvation Tech (Spain): Manufactures microwave-assisted freeze-drying (MAFD) machines that preserve nutrients and reduce energy use in industrial food preservation.
10. EdiMembre (USA): Develops edible membrane bioreactors using legume proteins to produce structured cultivated meat at scale through scaffold-free growth.

Global Startup Heat Map highlights New Food Manufacturing Companies to Watch

Through the Big Data & Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered StartUs Insights Discovery Platform, covering over 9M+ startups, 20K+ technology trends, plus 150M+ patents, news articles & market reports, we identified the top food manufacturing startups.

The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights emerging food production solutions you should watch in 2026, as well as the geo-distribution of 7000+ startups & scaleups we analyzed for this research.

According to our data, we observe high startup activity in the USA and India, followed by the UK. The top 5 Startup Hubs for Food Manufacturing are London, Singapore, Dubai, Bangalore, and Pune.

New Food Manufacturing Companies & Startups to Watch [2026]

We hand-picked startups to showcase in this report by filtering for their technology, founding year, location, funding, and other metrics. These emerging food manufacturing startups work on solutions ranging from safeplate technologies and food compliance to sustainable vegetable oils and food processing machinery.

1. Nyska – Food Processing Machinery

• Founding Year: 2024
• Location: Chandigarh, India

Indian startup Nyska manufactures food processing machinery. Its machines include honey processing plants, automatic beeswax foundation sheet machines, and tomato processing plants.

The honey processing plant automates honey production for small-scale farmers, beekeepers, and commercial honey businesses. It comes with moisture control and dehydration technologies to prevent fermentation and extend shelf life. Honey homogenization and creaming features further prevent crystallization.

Moreover, equipped honey filters remove wax, pollen, and other impurities. Coupled with heating and settling tanks, the filtration ensures compliance with regulatory standards. The startup also offers honey packaging machines for precise filling, capping, and labeling.

Its beeswax foundation sheet machine features corrosion-resistant materials for longevity and easy maintenance. The machine also ensures that the foundation sheet has uniform thickness and hexagonal cells. This optimises the space for honey storage.

2. Dinera – AI-based Food Scrutiny

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: Accra, Ghana

Ghana-based startup Dinera offers an AI-powered food safety and security app. It provides tools like dynamic quick response (QR) codes to connect producers, retailers, and consumers.

AI algorithms analyze food handling, preparation, and storage. This prevents foodborne illnesses. The app allows users to choose sustainable packaging materials to minimize environmental impact. It also features e-learning and research platforms to ensure the availability, accessibility, and utilization of food. This provides the food industry, consumers, and local vendors with traceable food chains.

3. NEXTIOSYS – Milk Monitoring

• Founding Year: 2025
• Location: Utrecht, Netherlands

Dutch startup NEXTIOSYS enables IoT-based monitoring of milk flow and quality through its DAIRYMON sensor. It continuously tracks milk temperature, electrical conductivity (EC), fat, protein, and lactose levels. The sensor detects mastitis early on and identifies blood contamination to prevent tank contamination.

Another solution, DAIRYMON-ID, is a tag system that enables precise cow identification and tracking. The startup also offers FarmBI software, which provides insights to improve milking efficiency. Farmers and dairy operations benefit from better quality control, reduced losses, and sustainable resource use.

4. Shelfion – Shelf-Life Prediction

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: Ghent, Belgium

Belgian startup Shelfion offers an AI-powered shelf-life prediction software. It utilizes simulation models and microbiological data to predict microbial growth under different storage, ingredient, and packaging conditions.

Users run simulations to optimize product stability before doing lab tests. The software enables them to adjust parameters to expand the shelf life. This provides food producers, recipe developers, and quality assurance teams with decision support regarding food spoilage and safety.

5. SafePlate Technologies – Shelf-Life Enhancement

• Founding Year: 2024
• Location: San Luis Obispo, California, USA
• Funding: USD 10K (LinkedIn)

USA-based startup SafePlate Technologies builds a diagnostic device, Arceo, to detect allergens in food before manufacturing or packaging. The device leverages synthetic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) biosensors to provide real-time quantitative allergen detection.

The device detects gluten, nut allergens, pathogens, and hazardous metals. This offers reusable, lab-grade testing to food manufacturers. Faster testing and fewer recalls further benefit small-scale food producers, caterers, and safety labs.

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6. RecovLabs – Sustainable Vegetable Oils

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: Berlin, Germany

German startup RecovLabs manufactures sustainable vegetable oils from coffee waste. It upcycles coffee grounds using green chemistry and biotechnology. The resulting oil serves as an ingredient for cosmetics and the food industry.

Moreover, the upcycled coffee oil does not require additional land use. This reduces greenhouse gas emissions caused by the landfilling of unused coffee grounds.

7. Delight Food – Alternative Meat Production

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: Pohang, South Korea

South Korean startup Delight Food develops alternative meat using a micro-dietary fiber control technology. It engineers the fiber’s aspect ratio, crystallinity, chemical groups, and surface interface to replicate varied food textures.

The process leverages dietary fiber and natural extraction to adjust fiber structure without artificial fillers. It provides a realistic mouthfeel and clean-labeled option to alternative protein brands, food ingredient companies, and consumers.

8. foodflou – Food Compliance

• Founding Year: 2025
• Location: Dublin, Ireland

Irish startup foodflou provides an AI-powered quality management platform. It offers document management, supplier oversight, traceability tools, and customizable audit forms.

The platform features include corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) scheduling, task tracking, customer complaints management, and more. This allows food manufacturers and quality assurance (QA) teams to meet regulatory compliance and reduce supply chain risks.

9. Salvation Tech – Microwave-assisted Freeze Drying

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: Valencia, Spain

Spanish startup Salvation Tech makes industrial microwave-assisted freeze-drying machines for food preservation. The machine offers drying with low energy consumption and minimizes nutrient loss in the drying process.

The microwave sublimation dryer preserves food quality and shelf life. Moreover, the accelerated drying process compared to conventional freeze-drying leads to faster production cycles.

10. EdiMembre – Edible Membrane for Meat Production

• Founding Year: 2025
• Location: Woburn, Massachusetts, USA

USA-based startup EdiMembre offers edible membrane technology for meat production. It leverages phase inversion to form micro- and nano-porous membranes using legume protein isolates. These membranes allow cell attachment and the passage of large molecules. This supports cell growth and nutrient exchange.

Its hollow fiber bioreactor, CraftRidge 3g, produces structured whole-cut cultivated meat. It provides scaffolding for cell growth to form meat cuts without conventional scaffolds. This enables large-scale production.

Discover All Emerging FoodTech Startups

The food manufacturing startups showcased in this report are only a small sample of all startups we identified through our data-driven startup scouting approach. Download our free FoodTech Innovation Report for a broad overview of the industry or get in touch for quick & exhaustive research on the latest technologies & emerging solutions that will impact your company in 2026!