Pitch & Pack Vetroline Startup Day: Finally back on stage

Austria has much to offer in the food sector value chain. In addition to more than 35,000 direct agricultural marketers, 11% of Austrian startups are also to be found in the food and consumer goods sector (Austrian Startup Monitor 2020). The wide range of opportunities was also reflected by the 73 applications to Pitch & Pack. There are clear trends in the food and drink sector towards regionality, health and meat-free and individualised nutrition. Pitch & Pack offers innovative startups and agricultural direct marketers an opportunity to find perfect answers to consumer demands and to put their companies on a sustainable footing.

Pitch & Pack enabled the food entrepreneurs to sit back and help themselves to the colourful buffet of expert talks. Claudia Mittermayr moderated the event, which focused, amongst other things, on packaging. The company Hackl explained the key aspects of good recycling concepts. The founders of all i need. and Hakuma shared their experiences, with a particular focus on what they would do differently today. And investor Andreas Ivanschitz and BILLA green packaging expert Branko Nikolic offered insights into their work with successful food ideas.

Diverse product ideas and successful pitches

During the second part of the day, the startups and direct marketers had the chance to present their products. All the presentations were very well-received by the jury, which was made up of Catrin Ferrari-Brunnenfeld (cookingCatrin), Andreas Ivanschitz, Christoph Metzker (RWA), Stefan Mariel (Vetroline), Dieter Kneidinger (Vertropack), Felix Ronge (TEWA) and Claudia Mittermayr (AIL). This made it all the more difficult to distribute the prizes.

My Poppies convinced the jury with its self-grown poppies and secured a social media coaching from cookingCatrin, while easyVEGAN’s reward for its frozen lentil products was a personal consultation on product filling and packaging from Aurora Consulting. Fruit Fuel’s personalised smoothies earned it a Vetroline packaging voucher and Hempion’s vegan Harmesan received a consulting voucher for a personal recycling concept from Oswald Hackl.

Even if not all the participants could be awarded a prize, the other finalists also presented convincing concepts. These were Keine Maerchen (salmon substitute from carrots), Samn’Sara (insect bar), Kulmer Fisch (minced fish from Styriamour), Wiener Bezirks Imkerei (Oxymel), Jus(t) (Verjus) and Agro Rebels (olive oil from Austria). All the participants took the opportunity to network extensively and establish initial collaborations.

The Agro Innovation Lab offers not only RWA’s specialist departments but also all other RWA subsidiaries the opportunity to collaborate in the areas of innovation and startups. The individual programmes that are developed under the direction of Claudia Mittermayr are designed to flexibly meet client needs. We are delighted that, after the long corona break, a startup format has finally been able to take place again and we would like to thank all participants and, in particular, Vetroline for the excellent cooperation.