What is ECOTROPHELIA?
ECOTROPHELIA is a student food innovation competition with the ambition of promoting competitiveness and entrepreneurship within the food industry. By working on the development of their food product, students learn all aspects of the company: R&D, marketing, packaging, quality, finance, etc, skills sought and valued by companies and helpful to help them build their start-up.
Throughout the years, the reputation of the competition has led to changes in school curricula and developed a training network of excellence in food innovation and stakeholders of the contest.
For the food industry, ECOTROPHELIA is a real eye-opener and a great platform of innovation and inspiration for this sector. It allows capitalizing on the limitless creativity and energy of our brightest and most enterprising students, supported by the best Universities and High Education Institutes.
Beyond the competitions, ECOTROPHELIA has become a network of training excellence in food innovation that mobilises higher education institutions and national federations of food industries in Europe. Thus, the ECOTROPHELIA network, a reference educational model supported by the European Union, plays an organisational role in promoting innovation and entrepreneurship among students.
Some figures
Today, ECOTROPHELIA is more than 3000 students who have participated in the competition, more than 1100 food innovative products, more than 200 universities and 22 countries who participated: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.
Who are we?
We are the EEIG ECOTROPHELIA EUROPE, a European grouping made of 9 institutions in the food sector:
- Administrator and president: EIT FOOD
- Members: ANIA (France), CCIS-CAFE (Slovenia), SEVT (Greece), LVA (Austria), FIAB (Spain), FEVIA (Belgium), SI (Iceland), and FoodDrinkEurope .
