From Food Waste to Value: Upcycling and Regulatory Aspects

Hosted by the British Section of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT)

About one-third of food produced globally is wasted, from processing by-products to unsold retail products. How can food waste be transformed into valuable, market-ready products, and what regulations govern this journey?

This two-part webinar explores the growing opportunities in food upcycling, from innovative technologies to market trends, alongside the key regulatory frameworks shaping its future.

Join leading experts as they unpack the science, the business case, and the legal realities of upcycling in food systems.

Speakers:

Prof Giorgia Spigno, Full Prof. Food Science and Technology, Head of Department, Sustainable Food Process, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy

Topic: Strategies and safety issues related to upcycled food ingredients.

Giorgia Spigno graduated in Food Science and Technology in 1999 and got a PhD in Process and Chemical Engineering in 2003. She has been a full professor in Food Science and Technology since 2021 at the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Italy), where she is also Head of the Department for Sustainable Food Process (DiSTAS) and coordinator of the MSc in Food Science and Technology. She teaches courses on food processing and plants, food packaging, and risk mitigation in food production. Her research activity has focused on the valorisation of agrifood residues for the development of ingredients and materials for the food industry; the development of food products with improved nutritional profile; the production, characterisation and use of plant proteins; always with a general approach to process optimisation and simulation. She is a member of the Italian professional order of Food Technologists, and she is Chief Editor of the International Journal of Food Science (Wiley).

Kathryn Williamson, PhD,  Co-founder and CEO, Unspent, USA

Topic: Moving Upcycling from Research to Revenue

Kathryn (Katie) Williamson is a food scientist and entrepreneur with a passion for turning food waste into value. She is the full-time CEO and co-founder of Unspent, a materials science company that upcycles food waste streams — starting with spent coffee grounds — into high-performance, eco-friendly materials, replacing petroleum-based inputs and helping build a circular, waste-free economy. She is currently based in New York, New York. Katie earned her MSc & PhD in Food Science and Technology at The Ohio State University working with Emmanuel Hatzakis, where she developed the breakthrough chemistry behind Unspent's patent-pending COPOXEE™ material — work that has led to two pending patents and ten peer-reviewed publications. Following her PhD, she spent three years as a scientist at Nestlé's Research Headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, giving her a firsthand view of food waste and sustainability challenges from inside the world's largest food company. 7 Activate–Gerstner Fellow, she brings together deep technical expertise, experience inside global industry, and the on-the-ground reality of scaling a startup.

This Webinar will be moderated by Maame Ekua Manful, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher, Technological University Dublin, Ireland