2019 IFTNEXT Future Food Disruptor of the Year

En Solución, creator of an innovative, environmentally-friendly post-harvest wash solution, earlier this month won the $25,000 prize in the 2019 IFTNEXT Food Disruption Challenge.

The competition, part of the huge annual IFT congress and expo held this year in New Orleans, brought five finalists together on stage to pitch their companies to a panel of judges.

Kenton Harmer, CEO of En Solución, began his four-minute pitch highlighting the recent foodborne outbreaks linked to fresh produce.

With packaged salad sales of $5.5-billion a year, according to Nielsen Perishables Group data, the risk of contamination is certainly not insignificant. The current method of using extreme concentrations of chlorine in a post-harvest wash to eliminate pathogens is harmful to the workers and the environment, and it “still can’t kill all pathogens,” explained Harmer.

“Packaged salad producers need a better solution for postharvest wash,” Harmer told the panel of six judges and the attendees that filled the ballroom.

The solution, he proposed, is the patent-pending technology his company invented, which enables the encapsulation of ozone gas within one trillion nanobubbles of water. “Ozone is the most effective against pathogens,” said Harmer.

In the Q&A portion at the end of his pitch, Harmer explained how difficult it was to figure out how to get the ozone gas — which is very hazardous on its own — into the bubbles. His team learned a lot as they iterated, and now the solution they developed has a provisional patent. The goal is to one day license the technology to a manufacturer.

To date, the company has received funding from the USDA and a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the US FDA. The $25,000 prize for winning the Food Disruption Challenge will enable the company to hire a microbiologist, Harmer told Food Technology magazine in an exclusive interview after the session.

He also expressed how invaluable the entire process of the competition was for him and his team. In particular, the mentors helped him realise that it’s okay to talk about the company’s social mission to not only keep food safer, but to keep the workers making our food safer as well.

Other finalists:

The five finalists, each representing an emerging and investment-ready startup, were selected in a months-long process that kicked off in November with 75 applicants who went through two rounds of competition before the group was narrowed down to 10 finalists. A third round of judging further narrowed the group to the five finalists.

Heliponix, developer of an-home hydroponic growing device called GroPod, was chosen by audience vote as the recipient of the competition’s $5,000 People’s Choice Award.

Developed by Scott Massey and his business partner, Ivan Ball, both of whom are recent Purdue University engineering graduates, the GroPod is designed “to turn everyday residential consumers into self-sustaining hydroponic farmers,” Massey said.

The energy-efficient, dishwasher-size appliance, which features Keurig-style seed pods, can yield a full supply of leafy greens, herbs, and microgreens in a 30-day growing cycle. Although to date the young entrepreneurs have sold just 12 devices, Massey is confident about the GroPod’s growth potential: “This is something we truly see as becoming a mainstream appliance,” he said.

Chinova Bioworks is a supplier of a natural clean label preservative called chitosan that is extracted from mushrooms. CEO Natasha Dhayagude delivered the pitch, explaining that chitosan’s defining characteristics include its ability to serve both as a broad spectrum and customisable preservative solution.

Gabanna is working to commercialise a healthy food ingredient called matooke derived from green bananas grown in East Africa. “We’re on a mission to share matooke with the world,” said COO Richard Both.

Yarok Microbio is the developer of a fast pathogen-detection technology. Founder and CEO Jonathan Sierra highlighted the fact that unlike some other microbial detection solutions, Yarok detects only live bacteria and delivers results within minutes.

Judges for the competition were Jon Atkinson, CEO of The Idea Village; Christian Brown, managing director of NOLA Holdings; Jeff Grogg, managing director, JPG Resources; Robert Lalka, executive director of the Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Tulane University; Tracy Landau, president and chief brand strategist, MarketPlace; and Jaime Leclerc Tulley, a food scientist, food writer, and entrepreneur.

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