Since its creation in 2000, ECOTROPHELIA has become the 1st national competition in food innovation and a major meeting place for the food processing industry and French universities. Certified IDEFI, Initiatives D’Excellence en Formations Innovantes (Initiatives for Excellence in Innovative Training), the project, co-sponsored by ENSAIA, has been cited as the reference by the Commission for Innovation 2030. It is also supported by the European Union through its Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Program (CIP) in Innovative Training.
The aim of this competition is to encourage the creation and eco-innovation in food by teams of students in scientific and/or business higher education and to bolster competition in food processing companies. ENSAIA’s students, organized in teams and under the supervision of the school’s teacher-researchers, develop and create innovative food products through the various stages of the product development process:
- Brainstorming: a product, aname
- Marketing studies
- R&D
- Consumer surveys, sensory analysis
- Quality regulations, HACCP
- Packaging
- Business Plan
- Finding industrial partnerships
This pedagogical approach, original and active, is carried out in the 3rd year of the Food Industry engineering program at ENSAIA. It encourages innovation and the spirit of entrepreneurship in student-engineers by putting them in a professional situation, making them aware of how a project is carried out and encouraging their sense of responsibility through an industrial partnership.
The competition involves 13 schools and universities, 8 organizations and technical centers and numerous institutional and industrial partners. Since its creation, 1200 students have developed more than 300 new food products, of which more than 30 have been industrialized and put on the market. Recognized at the European level since 2011, ECOTROPHELIA is evidence of the rise in the food innovation culture in the Grandes Ecoles..
