Hormel 2023

Upcycled Food Ingredient Landscape

Open Innovation Challenge: 

Understand the total marketplace of potential upcycled food byproducts / coproducts in Minnesota and surrounding states for re-use in new food innovation platform development. This project would identify potential waste streams from multiple processing and production agriculture sources. Information would be used to identify new product and process development opportunities across Hormel brands and operating units.

Reason for Seeking External Innovation Partnership:

To expand the scope of our knowledge in the byproduct / coproduct materials available for new product and process opportunities which add value to Minnesota’s economy while minimizing food waste.

Scope of Solution Space:

Identification of byproducts / coproducts that can be used in development of new food products or processes.

Priority will be given to byproducts / coproducts that are non-allergenic, generated at large scale (greater than 100,000 pounds annually), and are derived from food or agriculture based operations.

Secondary priority will be given to byproducts / coproducts that contain low water content.

Low priority will be given to byproduct / coproduct materials that are not currently human food-grade, but have a reasonable trajectory to achieving human food-grade status.

Solutions Not of Interest:

Byproducts that are not or cannot (without significant investment of time or resources) meet human food-grade standards

Byproducts that contain multiple allergens, specifically dairy, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts (including but not limited to almonds, cashews, walnuts, Brazil nuts, macadamia nuts, pistachios, and pine nuts), shellfish / crustaceans, wheat, soy, fish, and sesame

Funding research projects to explore novel opportunities

Company Background:

Our team of inspired people, 20,000 strong, is a collection of innovators and foodies, scientists and entrepreneurs, advocates and ambassadors, working together to build a distinctly different type of company, one that truly understands our position in the world and the difference we can make.

Since the beginning, we’ve believed that social responsibility is more than giving away a percentage of our profits at the end of the year. While we are committed to many worthy causes, including cancer research and fighting childhood hunger, it is our core business – efficiently producing delicious food for the world’s growing population – of which we are most proud. We believe in making good food available to everyone. This means ensuring access to affordable, safe, nutritious and delicious foods with recognizable ingredients.

Good business and good stewardship go hand in hand with environmentalism, water and energy conservation, and improvements designed to make our food supply safer and ultimately better for us all. Given our role in helping to feed America and the world for more than 130 years, we know that building social value and creating economic value are not competing goals. For us, there is no daylight between good citizenship and good business.

And where Our Path Forward is our compass, Our Food Journey is our North Star.