Solar Foods Receives World's Most Prestigious Design Award

06/09/2019

Solar Foods, the Finnish company producing protein by using carbon dioxide and electricity, has been presented with the Index Award supported by the state of Denmark. The 100,000 euro award is given for the most impactful solution significant to the environment and improving people’s lives.

The Index Award is a biennial award supported by the state of Denmark. The total award fund is €500,000 divided between the winners in five award categories. Index Award has existed since 2005 and is the biggest money prize in its class. This recognition, also called the “Nobel prize for design”, acknowledges actors solving global problems in areas such as equality, food production, and plastic pollution.

Participants include projects from all over the world, with the finalists and winners judged by an international jury. Other winners of this year’s prize include Microsoft and Xbox, with previous winners including Elon Musk. The award is under the patronage of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark.

Denmark has the ambitious goal of being a carbon-neutral country by 2050. Therefore, many Danish companies have set themselves the target of becoming the most responsible company before anyone else in their business.

“It is a magnificent feeling to know you are taking part in global responsibility. Researchers must turn the inventions and technologies incubated in laboratories into reality and commercialise them faster to benefit humankind. The Solein® protein is an excellent example of an innovation urgently needed by humans and the entire globe,” says Pasi Vainikka, CEO, Solar Foods.

Solar Foods is a food tech company developing globally revolutionary solutions for food production. The bioprocess and technology developed by Solar Foods enable food production without agriculture. In the future, harvesting can comprise of an entirely new harvest grown in a clean environment, while complementing existing protein sources with new natural protein.

At the core of the company’s operation is a sense of enormous responsibility: using renewable energy for producing food in a way that has the lowest possible environmental burden.

“The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the rainforest wildfires in Amazonia are recent examples of the dire news we are witnessing about the state of the globe and its food system. At Solar Foods we develop solutions that disconnect natural resources from economic growth and food production. That’s how we are contributing to a solution in the crisis of global food supply,” Vainikka says.

Cleanest natural protein

Solar Foods is introducing a globally revolutionary protein for foodstuffs for consumers made in its bioprocess developed in-house. The Solein protein, suitable to be added to a variety of products, is produced mainly from air and electricity. In the future, Solein protein can be grown and harvested anywhere: in the middle of a desert, or even in space.

Solein is natural protein at its cleanest. Its production minimises harmful environmental impact, thereby providing transparent support for sustainable development. Revolutionary on a global scale, Solein is a protein for solving problems in managing the global food crisis and the overexploitation of natural resources. Solein is the product of natural evolution over hundreds of millions of years by using the diversity of nature.

At present, Solar Foods is studying the applicability of the Solein protein to different diets and consumer preferences. The protein includes no additives, instead, consumers will know it as an example of an ethical, clean source of protein. Solein’s amino acid composition is like that of soya and algae, therefore optimal for human needs.

Solar Foods aims at starting the first stage of commercial production of the protein during 2021.

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More information:

Pasi Vainikka, DSc (Tech), CEO, Solar Foods Oy, tel. +358 40 5825 987, pasi@solarfoods.fi

Solar Foods is a food-tech company that develops revolutionary innovations for food production at a global level. Solar Foods is an active player in solving the global food crisis and securing sustainable use of natural resources by disconnecting food production from agriculture. Solein® is a registered trademark of Solar Foods. www.solarfoods.fi