UK’s first Novel Foods expert network established

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RSSL establishes UK’s first Novel Foods Expert Network in partnership with Imperial College London and The Supplant Company

 

 

RSSL, a leading food and life science contract research organisation, has today announced that it has secured funding from Innovate UK, the UK’s national innovation agency, to establish the country’s first Novel Foods Expert Network for Regulatory Challenges (NFX UK). 

 

Developed in partnership with Imperial College London and The Supplant Company, NFX UK will foster innovation and collaboration across the novel foods sector, serving as a pioneering platform to accelerate the development and commercialisation of new food technologies and products.

 

NFX UK will also play a central role in supporting the UK government in its’ vision of establishing more transparent and streamlined regulatory processes for novel foods. This will be essential to help the UK become a global leader in novel foods research, design, and delivery, as well as facilitate the swift market entry of groundbreaking solutions.

 

 

To help achieve its mission of driving novel food innovation, NFX UK has three main objectives:

 

  • Act as a central hub for learning resources: Collation and development of central resources.  Providing access for the industry to regulatory science tools to enable a clearer understanding of regulatory processes, data requirements, risk, and safety assessments for novel food ingredients.

 

  • Promote connections for novel foods innovators: Facilitating collaborations across the sector, between analytical and technology organisations, scale-up and manufacturing facilities, consultants, and research institutions.

 

  • Foster positive exchange with regulatory authorities: Offering insights into industry challenges and emerging technologies to help inform decision making for agile and proportionate regulation in response to innovation.

 

 

Jacinta George, MD & VP at RSSL, commented “We are proud to lead the creation of NFX UK. At RSSL, we recognise the transformative potential of novel food innovation and are excited to support the vital cross sector collaborations necessary to accelerate the delivery of more cost-effective, sustainable and healthy food options.”

 

Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, Director of BEZOS Centre for Sustainable Protein and Microbial Food Hub at Imperial College London, said: “We are thrilled to start this project to support companies in the alternative protein and novel food space navigate regulation. This partnership fully aligns with our goals of the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein and the Microbial Food Hub at Imperial College London and we are very thankful to Innovate UK for their support.”

 

Dr. Tom Simmons, CEO of The Supplant Company, added: “We at The Supplant Company are thrilled to be part of this project and believe that the network will provide invaluable resources to help companies navigate the requirements for novel foods applications.”

 

If you would like to learn more about NFX UK please contact Sonalika Jain (NFX UK Project Lead, RSSL) sonalika.jain@rssl.com

 

 

About the partners

 

 

RSSL is a cutting-edge contract research organisation, pushing the boundaries of science and innovation to help make our world safer, healthier and more sustainable. Our clients trust us to deliver innovative solutions to real-world problems through rigorous analytical testing, state-of-the-art research and development, customised consultancy, and training services. In everything we do, we are focused on transforming lives through science, innovation, and collaboration. 

 

 

We are Imperial – a world-leading university for science, technology, engineering, medicine and business (STEMB), where scientific imagination leads to world-changing impact.
As a global top ten university in London, we use science to try to understand more of the universe and improve the lives of more people in it. Across our nine campuses and throughout our Imperial Global network, our 22,000 students, 8,000 staff, and partners work together on scientific discovery, innovation and entrepreneurship. Their work navigates some of the world’s toughest challenges in global health, climate change, AI, business leadership and more.
Founded in 1907, Imperial’s future builds on a distinguished past, having pioneered penicillin, holography and fibre optics. Today, Imperial combines exceptional teaching, world-class facilities and a habit of interdisciplinary practice to unlock scientific imagination.
The Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein at Imperial College London, funded by the Bezos Earth Fund, strives to advance the alternative protein revolution. Harnessing advanced science and technology, we aim to transform global food systems, making them more sustainable, healthy, equitable, and resilient, while creating solutions for global food security. For more information on Imperial and the Bezos Centre, visit  https://www.imperial.ac.uk

 

 

The Supplant Company is a venture-backed food ingredient company that exists to solve three interconnected problems within our global food system: nutrition, sustainability, and food security. From this mission came their flagship ingredient for sugar replacement, Supplant™ Sugars from Fiber, and now their pioneering new ingredient, Supplant™ Grain & Stalk Flour. By upcycling agricultural side-streams into ingredients that perform like traditional sugar and flour, your favorite foods can still look, feel and taste as they are meant to, but without the negative nutritional and environmental effects. For more information on The Supplant Company and its ingredients, visit https://www.supplant.com/.