FoodPilotPlant Norway: Upgrading of the Pilot Plant Facilities for Food Processing at Campus Ås (phase II)

FoodPilotPlant Norway (Matpiloten) is a research infrastructure for food processing located at NMBU and Nofima on Campus Ås. The infrastructure has been built up through the participating institutions' own efforts and the allocation of infrastructure funds from the Research Council of Norway. FoodPilotPlant Norway has had two awards from the Research Council of Norway, Phase I from 2011 to 2015 was awarded NOK 29 million and Phase II (current project) started in 2020 was awarded NOK 49 million. Up to now, NOK 26 million of the funds allocated in Phase II have been invested in new equipment, and more equipment is on the way. The project is to be completed in the first quarter of 2025. The infrastructure is in operation based on Phase I. The allocation of the infrastructure grants from the Research Council of Norway gives us the opportunity to develop a state-of-the-art pilot facility on Campus Ås, and this makes us an outstanding arena for research into food production and food processing. The infrastructure has made it possible for Campus Ås to expand its research opportunities, both with regard to food processing, the development of new food products and research into food safety. FoodPilotPlant Norge has thus made it possible for us to apply for and receive funding for new and innovative research projects. FoodPilotPlant Norway has infrastructure and equipment designed for research, innovation and teaching within the processing of all food raw materials, as well as residual raw materials from this processing. The infrastructure has equipment for the production of foodstuffs on a small scale, such as breakfast cereals, beer, cheese and sausages, tanks for fermentation, packaging and to investigate the growth of pathogenic microorganisms in processed food. Increased research focus on sustainability means that we have increased focus on implementing infrastructure to be able to utilize all the raw materials and use green technology when we produce food. The infrastructure also has access to laboratories with a wide range of analytical equipment. FoodPilotPlant Norway has a wide range of applications and the infrastructure is used in international and national research projects, in teaching and for testing processes and production of test products for the food industry. FoodPilotPlant Norway is used by students in Food Science both in regular teaching in the form of exercises, but also in master's and PhD work. In 2022, both researchers from universities, research institutes and industry as well as bachelor and master students have used the infrastructure in FoodPilotPlant Norway, in total the infrastructure has had 400 users in 2022. The infrastructure is currently a research base for 15 PhD students. The infrastructure is used for external courses run by e.g. The ecology program under the auspices of the Norwegian Directorate of Agriculture and the Competence Network for small-scale food production. This has been somewhat reduced in the spring of 2022 due to the COVID shutdown, but has picked up during the autumn of 2022. In 2022, 9 scientific articles based on activity in FoodPilotPlant Norway were published in international scientific journals. FoodPilotPlant Norway also has regular publications in the media and popular scientific journals. There are currently > 100 research projects at Campus Ås that use FoodPilotPlant Norway's research. These projects work, for example, with: - To develop meat substitutes made from beans that can be used e.g. in burgers. - Norwegian tapas cheese made from goat's milk, and the importance of somatic cells in the milk for cheese quality. - Food quality when new raw materials such as yeast grown from tree sugar, insects, seaweed and kelp are used. - How molecules fluctuate in the food in order to be able to measure which types of fat, which types of proteins and how much of each fat and protein type you have in a food and thus improve the utilization of the raw materials. - How chicken offal can be used to produce bacteria or yeast, which can then be used for, for example, oil or new food ingredients. - To develop more environmentally friendly packaging that also extends the shelf life of food products. - Develop new ways to secure the food against the growth of unwanted bacteria and thus give increased durability and better taste to the food. Operations in 2020, 21 and 22 have been strongly affected by COVID 19, where NMBU in particular but also partly Nofima have been shut down for parts of the year. Use and utilization of the infrastructure has therefore been much lower than expected in these years.