The UK’s Food Incubator is a newly launched business designed to help food producer companies and start-ups navigate their way to market. It identifies appropriate and assured processes to evidence the proven safety and shelf life of new products – while still retaining taste, flavor and visual appeal. 

Headed up by food industry heavyweight, Tom Russell, The Food Incubator offers a suite of services to help both established and fledgling food enterprises.

“The food and drink industry represents the UK’s largest manufacturing sector. It contributes £28 billion [US$37.9 billion] to the economy and is growing year on year. UK lockdown restrictions have only fuelled this growth, with the COVID-19 crisis spurring many entrepreneurs into action,” Russell remarks.

“These factors combine with a renewed focus on the important role that food plays in maintaining health and well-being and the rise in consumer demand for products that don’t rely on artificial preservatives to maintain shelf life,” he continues.

“There is also increasing recognition that success for a brand is no longer dependent on securing a listing in a multiple due to the change in consumer buying habits, and a strong appetite exists for the continued investment in new food and drink products.”

According to Agfunder, in the first half of 2021, start-ups have globally raised US$24 billion, getting very close to the total for all of 2020.The Food Incubator team has over 50 years of experience of working in the thermal processing industry, having applied its expertise to support a broad range of categories including soups, sauces, food-to-go, baby food, health foods, plant proteins, dairy products and pet foods. 

Suite of scale-up expertise
According to Agfunder, in the first half of 2021, start-ups have globally raised US$24 billion, getting very close to the total for all of 2020.

As experts in thermal processing – sterilization and pasteurization – The Food Incubator works with companies to explore processing options and identify those must suited to their product; operate small batch runs for start-ups; provide data analysis to validate commercial viability for multiple runs and create early samples for evaluation.

In addition, The Food Incubator offers training courses to enable understanding of thermal processing and retort operation with operators, technical staff and new team members. 

The company can also deliver specialist assistance to established food producers looking to test products or investigate viability of increased capacity. 

Further support in terms of the provision of specialist promotional activities and new product development is available, the latter providing clients with the opportunity to secure early affirmation of a product’s propensity for manufacture.

The business is equipped with two state-of-the-art Lagarde Steam/Air retorts and also has a range of other pilot food processing equipment for clients to use.

The Food Incubator has plans to extend the business operations to include the delivery of packaging consultancy and implementation in the future.