Advanced sensors to detect food freshness

Every year, the global agricultural industry produces 193.1m tonnes of meat, 140m tonnes of seafood and 132m tonnes of chicken for human consumption. This takes tremendous resources, due to supply chain inefficiencies, oversupply and a lack of standardised quality control protocol.

Microbiology lab data is currently expensive and sparse, perpetuating one-size-fits-all and risk averse approaches to monitoring food freshness in the industry, resulting in excessive, avoidable food waste and carbon emissions. BlakBear is solving the cold-chain's waste problem with real-time food spoilage monitoring via a patented, prototyped TRL7 sensor technology. Our patent-pending paper-based electrical gas sensors (PEGS) are a highly sensitive, low-cost data capture technology, which measures food spoilage gases (Amines, CO2, VOCs). Sensors collect spoilage data digitally and transmit this to the Cloud. The corresponding BlakBear App allows users to understand food spoilage data in real-time and make decisions that impact the cold chain monitoring. This step change in sensing robustness will enable supply chains to use our sensors to inform decision-making, such as packaging type, the way to position and stack protein, chiller temperatures, rejection of shipments and eco-labelling.

In this project BlakBear will collect spoilage data via a new and novel advanced sensor with high sensitivity to water-soluble spoilage gases including ammonia/trimethylamine/carbon dioxide to improve the accuracy of spoilage measurements and AI predictive spoilage modelling. In time our sensors will replace "best guess" microbiology testing processes, catalyse longer shelf-life and inform industry on cold-chain inefficiencies so that targeted improvements can be made. Removing cold chain inconsistencies will reduce the oversupply of fresh food that suppliers produce to compensate for waste. We believe this could save the UK food industry alone £1.1bn/year.

This project is a natural stepping stone in sustainable supply chains, where crucial food quality parameters are automatically reported in real-time without human intervention.