Result description
More than 1.6 billion tonnes of food are wasted every year worldwide. 40% of the waste occurs at the beginning of the value chain. The food industry suffers economic losses of $660 billion as a result.
LEROMA, founded in 2019, is a German B2B platform for food raw materials and creates a digital bridge between food raw material suppliers and food producers. We offer a global online database of food raw materials and a surplus exchange tool in order to minimize food waste. Surpluses and residues can be transferred to food processors or companies in other industries like the cosmetics or chemical industry.
LEROMA’s B2B platform for food raw materials connects suppliers and buyers of food raw materials, surpluses and residues. The Surplus Exchange provides a marketplace where surpluses can be listed and found. The unique feature here is that each individual raw material is assigned individual technical criteria. The special feature here is that each individual raw material is assigned individual subject criteria. When searching for a product, these parameters serve as a filter.
Passing on raw materials not only reduces food waste, but also simplifies the procurement process. This saves food manufacturers and producers from other industries time and money
Addressing target audiences and expressing needs
- Grants and Subsidies
- Other blended financing
- Business partners – SMEs, Entrepreneurs, Large Corporations
We are looking for partners in current projects and new opportunities to contribute to a circular economy in the food industry.
- Public or private funding institutions
- Other Actors who can help us fulfil our market potential
- Research and Technology Organisations
R&D, Technology and Innovation aspects
This year we published the new third business model: the valorization forum. More precisely this forum, also designed with sustainability in mind, actively promotes new business relationships between new partners and facilitates a better exchange of recycling options for sidestreams of food raw materials. For example, one manufacturer produces 6,000 tons of mango peels per month. He communicates this raw material, which is superfluous for him, via the valorization forum, so that a user can register in the forum and share his knowledge or also suggest his own or another company for a recycling possibility. Mango peels can be used to make shoe soles, for example.
We want the forum to become more well-known around our users. Besides that, we are expanding the database permanently with all ingredients and supplements. In the upcoming years we will use our database also for side streams.
We see from more awareness about resource conservation and attempts for reducing inefficiencies while trading, producing or processing within the food industry. Although there are predictions of experts that we will have more food waste by 2024 than today because the food market trends enjoy a variety in taste, shape and new technologies. Therefore, the food producers will face more waste while producing more diverse products and offering a bigger portfolio for not losing market shares. The end consumer will have the opportunity to buy all variants of one product and enjoy a full range of supply at any season and time of the day while shopping.
Therefore, it is necessary that more solutions and innovations will be developed for reducing food waste along the whole supply chain. For LEROMA it means more possibilities and projects by connecting suppliers and buyers of surpluses internationally. We also want to educate and motivate producers and product designers to reuse existing ingredients in the regional approach, more nutritional product ideas and upcycling technologies.
Our goal is to support infrastructures with our networking platform and as well our valorization forum to create more recycled products with agricultural waste products and sidestreams. Our dream case is when a plastic producer who is located close to the sea boarders is using the already existing technology and creates biodegradable plastic out of fish waste like skin or bones.
Through LEROMA, raw material procurement for food manufacturers is united on one platform and made easier than ever. Until now, food producers needed many platforms for different raw materials. In addition, buyers of raw materials can view important certificates and specifications instead of having to send many mails.
In the course of time, more functions are to be added according to customer requirements; in the platform economy, at any rate, many things are possible.
The Surplus Exchange offers our customers the opportunity to earn money with raw materials that are no longer needed. This way, food waste is being reduced and more efficiency in resource management can be achieved.
- Europe
Result submitted to Horizon Results Platform by LEROMA GMBH
