Winners of the V-Label international innovation competition announced!

By: Szöllősi Réka Date: 2024. 01. 11. 10:16

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The third edition of the innovation competition of the most famous international certification mark for vegan products, the Switzerland-based V-Label, has come to an end. On 1 November the winners were announced online, and then live at the Plant Based World Europe trade show in London on 16 November.

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2023/12-01

Guest writer:
Réka Szöllősi
independent food policy analyst
elelmiszervilag.hu

As a member of the jury in the sustainability category, I had to choose the best 15 products from the entries pre-selected by an algorithm. With a couple of exceptions, the shortlisted products were food, and they offered a very good cross section of the strategic thinking about sustainability that the food industry can apply: from ingredient and packaging material selection and sourcing, circular production processes, and resource saving to value-added reuse, social impact maximising, and stakeholder engagement.

Analysing the sustainability category from a “Hungarian” point of view, unfortunately I must say that I wasn’t surprised not to find any products made by Hungarian manufacturers. At the same time, I was really surprised to see that the Central European region was very well represented in the category. In the light of this, I think the lesson we can learn from the competition is that food manufacturers and investors in neighbouring countries do see potential in sustainability and vegan foods. //