Agri-food Consulting

One of our clients, an industrial player in the agri-food sector, wanted to assess and develop its clean label strategy. To do this, we have supported it by benchmarking the strategies and actions of its competitors.

First, we defined the contours of the clean label, in order to establish a common definition that can serve as a framework. Then, we studied the actions of companies from various sectors: drinks, snacking, dairy products, infant nutrition etc. and carried out this benchmark on several geographies (Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, Africa), in order to understand what the regional specific features could be.

We were thus able to establish recommendations for our client on product strategies (which have an impact on formulations) and communication strategies towards the public and the stakeholders of the value chain.

We supported the R&D team of a leading player in the food industry in optimizing its innovation process to accelerate the marketing of its products.

Our client had an innovation process very rich in ideas but internally focused and not very open to an external ecosystem. This constraint generated many limitations, including slow idea characterization and feasibility checks.

By conducting a benchmark of existing open innovation practices in the industry and leading a series of workshops with our client’s teams, we identified and implemented actions to use external partners at various stages of the innovation process in order to accelerate the different stages and thus the marketing of product innovations.

We supported a major industry player in exploring the market of seed microbial treatments. The target of the investigation was to identify pain points, needs, and expectations of players all along the value chain in order to build a differentiating value proposition.

Through this, we were able to bring a clear picture of the biological control market in seed microbial treatments, allowing the prioritization of unsatisfied needs and functionalities that our client could respond to. We also helped in the creation of a 5-year roadmap, identifying each key step and the internal initiatives required to accomplish them.

To help our client achieve its carbon neutrality goals, we conducted a review of innovations to reduce enteric fermentation in dairy cows. We explored 3 main types of sources: scientific publications, disruptive commercial solutions, and interviews with technical institutes and additive suppliers.

During a workshop with our client, we elaborated its 15-year roadmap, integrating the set of process solutions to be implemented as well as the action steps to be carried out for each solution (partners, red flags to work on, solution ambassadors, …).

In addition to a roadmap, key implementation partners have been identified to anticipate the first steps of operational implementation.

One of our customers, a leading alcoholic beverage company, had the ambition to reduce its carbon footprint by 50% by 2030.

However, the valorization of distillery by-products was energy-intensive. Alcimed’s role was to assist the technical director in benchmarking the technologies used in combustion, gasification and other thermo-chemical technologies for wet co-products.

We then evaluated the feasibility of some of these technologies for our client’s co-products. Alcimed was thus able to recommend two relevant options allowing its client to valorize its co-products by optimizing its energy consumption!

One of our clients, a leader in the food industry, wanted to be supported in the implementation of a strategy for the deployment of connected objects, and more specifically connected tools in its factories, with a view to improving the efficiency of its industrial processes.

To do this, Alcimed first carried out several benchmarks relating to connected tools in Industry 4.0 in order to identify the most attractive technologies for our client. Then, our team created a personalized toolbox for our client.

This toolbox laid out an approach for the deployment of new technological solutions within factories, a proposal for the organization of stakeholders, tools for monitoring deployment, and visual management.

An international leader in the segment of enzymes for the agrifood industry asked our team to help develop its product offering for “plant substitutes to meat” applications (vegetable steaks, vegetable nuggets, etc.) and “plant-based milks” (soy milk, almond milk, etc.).

The first step of our project consisted in carrying out a field investigation aimed at understanding the needs and expectations of B2C players toward ingredient manufacturers for the years to come, thus allowing us to categorize avenues for new offers for our client into 4 main themes: improve the nutritional profile, improve taste & texture, offer “clean label” products, and optimize production costs.

We then transposed these needs into specifications for our client’s R&D team to plan the development of enzymatic solutions adapted to the challenges of current or future market players. Our team finally translated these specifications into a list of R&D projects, prioritized according to the capabilities and challenges of our client.

Our team supported the global R&D team of a leading food company in the development of its future product portfolio through a “culinary workshop”.

To do so, we organized and moderated a two-day workshop gathering about 40 participants, with the aim of selecting the two R&D programs to be conducted in the next few years. From the collection of their “ingredients” (ideas) to the realization of their “recipe” (R&D investment program), Alcimed supported the several R&D “kitchen” teams in the construction of their future during these two days.

Mixing numerous sub-team activities, presentation and voting sessions in plenary, and team building activities, our workshop resulted in the pre-selection of two of the developed programs to be evaluated by the company’s executive committee.