University: University of Reading
Category: Sports Nutrition Energy Product
Short description: Sports Nutrition Energy Product Developed to provide endurance athletes with a vegan sustainable alternative to energy products.
The global sports nutrition market is growing rapidly however an in-depth analysis revealed opportunities to improve packaging and ingredient sustainability, and so VENERGY was born. VENERGY’s vegan lemon and lime flavoured energy sweets are developed specifically to optimise the energy delivered to endurance athletes in an easy to consume format. Sustainability considerations are made in terms of ingredients, packaging and production. Carrageenan is used as a vegan sustainable alternative to gelatine and is extracted from a local seaweed, Irish Moss. Waste seaweed from the extraction, seaweed pulp, is used to produce biodegradable packaging for the sweets. The maltodextrin and glucose in the sweets are hydrolysed from starch extracted from potato skins, a waste stream from the potato crisp industry. Any waste potato from this extraction is fed into an anaerobic digestion tank to power VENERGY’s production. VENERGY aims to provide a nutritional and convenient product to the consumer while ensuring sustainability.
