Upgrain wins the Swiss Sustainability Impact Award 2025
The Appenzell start-up Upgrain received the "Swiss Sustainability Impact Award" at this year's START Summit in St.Gallen for its achievements in the field of food upcycling. The award ceremony took place at the Olma Messen St.Gallen. The event offers start-ups a platform to present their innovations and make contact with potential investors and industry representatives.
"This award is a great honor for our team and a confirmation of our work in the field of sustainable food production. We are delighted with the recognition and see it as an incentive to further develop our technology and expand it internationally," says Vincent Vida, CEO of Upgrain.
Innovative use of spent grains
Upgrain has developed an innovative process for refining spent grains, a by-product of beer brewing. Together with the Locher brewery, the company commissioned Europe's largest spent grains processing plant last year. The plant processes around 25,000 tons of spent grains annually into proteins, fibre and other valuable ingredients for the food industry. These are used as a flour substitute, to improve the texture of baked goods and meat substitute products and as a basis for protein-rich snacks and drinks.
This process helps to reduce CO₂ emissions, saves water and reduces the need to cultivate land for traditional protein sources such as wheat or soy. The Locher brewery alone saves over 5,500 tons of CO₂ every year. The process is internationally scalable and will play an important role in the food industry, as the first production lines show.
Integration into Swiss army catering
The Swiss Armed Forces have also recently started using spent grains-based foods as a sustainable meat substitute to feed soldiers. The Locher brewery produces these under the "brewbee" brand from its own spent grains, which are processed using the Upgrain system. These products meet the high requirements of army rations in terms of nutritional content and satiety.
Aurèle Meyer, Managing Director of Locher Brewery, emphasizes the importance of this development: "The start-up Upgrain has shown that it has created a scalable innovation in the field of food upcycling, which makes the side streams of our brewery versatile."
Upgrain had already won the START Summit in 2021 - back then as a start-up idea. With the support and prize money that came with this award, Upgrain was able to win the Locher brewery as a partner and build the spent grains processing plant in Appenzell. Vincent Vida emphasizes: "Without the START Summit, we would not be where we are today: At the forefront of the fight against food waste and with Europe's largest spent grains processing plant in full operation."
Source: www.upgrain.ch
