| Project Detail |
Food safety can never be taken for granted, and safer food saves lives. Every year around 600 million foodborne illnesses and 420,000 deaths are caused by a series of hazards, with 80% of the cases depending on 5 bacteria. Positive release is the approach that is being gradually introduced by food industry to reduce the tremendous impact of food poisoning. Basically, this means the products are released to the market only after they are tested against the presence of bacteria. However, current food safety tests are based on time-consuming cell culturing approaches to grow bacteria at detectable levels, which causes tests to be performed in 48-72 hours. Therefore, food manufacturers are at a crossroad: positive release means accumulating stocks in warehouses, which raises costs for storage and shortens the products shelf-life for fresh foods. On the other side, relaxing food safety procedures accelerates the turnover of goods but endangers the safety of consumers and the companys reputation. To address these issues, at Bactusense we have developed a revolutionary device which shortens the time needed for bacteria detection from days to hours. After the successful lab validation, the product development roadmap is now focused on taking the technology to the industrial stage, by interacting with 3 large customers to verify the requirements to be fulfilled for the integration of the product in food safety measurements standards and protocols. Next, we will proceed with system engineering and preparation to the in-field validation (Phase 2) together with large prospective customers, thus paving the way to the commercialization in 2020. The interaction with potential customers is confirming the strong interest in the product, and we envisage to sell more than 1.5 million kits by 2022, generating a turnover of around 10 M€ after 3 years of commercialization. |
