The power of innovation has no boundaries

Ninna joined us as a guest of the festival during the 2023 edition. She was accompanied by an old acquaintance of ours, Tess Mateo, who represents our contact with the USA and particularly with the UN. Tess met Ninna at the InvestHer event, where her project Green Spot won in the food category.

Tess was impressed and immediately understood her potential to change the food sector worldwide, deciding to personally invest in the project. Green Spot was founded in France in 2018 and is led by Ninna Granucci, CEO and co-founder. The team has won numerous awards (French Tech 2030, Agri 20, EIC Accelerator, winner of Kraft&Heinz, Sodebo, Casino, Givaudan, BlendHub challenges), and Ninna was awarded the ‘EU Prize Women Innovators 2022’.

The technology behind the project allows the recycling of by-products from the processing of fruits and vegetables, transforming them into gluten-free flour through a highly innovative industrial process (5 patents filed; 13 trade secrets) of solid fermentation.

ReGeneration Hub Friuli, besides organizing the festival, is very active in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region and always strives to involve local businesses. When we met Ninna we immediately understood, along with Tess Mateo, that her company could bring innovation to the agro-food sector of Friuli.

A couple of months after the end of the festival, we organized a tour of our region to connect Ninna with some of the most important companies in the food sector, where this technology could make an impact.

For this reason, we focused on two leading sectors in the region: coffee with Illy and wine, which includes Venica & Venica, Felluga, and, indirectly, Nonino.

We decided to engage with the coffee sector because, during the cleaning of the fruit to extract the bean, all the pulp becomes waste material. Currently, in the absence of another use, this pulp is only partially used as fertilizer.

In the wine sector, grape pomace and stems are produced as waste from grape processing. The pomace is collected by various wineries in the region, including Venica & Venica and Felluga, and sent to Nonino, which uses it to produce grappa through the distillation process. Currently, the pomace, completely dried out by distillation, is recycled and used in some cosmetic products. However, producing flour from it would create a higher-value food product compared to these uses. The stems, on the other hand, are currently only used for fertilization.

With Illy, after the first meeting at their headquarters in Trieste, a solid foundation for future collaborations has been established. Meanwhile, we are progressing much faster with the entire wine sector. Initial tests have already been conducted with pomace from both wine fermentation and grappa distillation, and the flour will soon be brought back to Italy for culinary applications. The stems are currently undergoing a phase of R&D to see if they can also be utilized.

Nowadays, we are connecting Ninna with chefs and culinary laboratories to experiment with the flour produced so far. Specifically, we are working with Hattiva Lab and reaching out to Chef Antonia Klugmann. With the laboratory, the goal is to produce cookies that can be paired with wine tastings from Venica & Venica.

The NanoValbruna festival lasts a few days, but the collaborations that arise during that period continue well beyond, developing over time.