Ingka Investments, one of the three business areas of Ingka Group, has made an investment in Winnow, an innovative UK-based company that has developed an AI-enabled food waste tracking and analytics solution to help reduce food waste in commercial kitchens.
With $12 million investment led by Ingka Investments, tougher with Circularity Capital, Mustard Seed and other investors, Winnow can now accelerate its technology development and rollout of its latest technology product, Winnow Vision, to help commercial kitchens around the world save food from going to waste. Winnow’s goal is to save its customers $1 billion by 2025.
Winnow’s goal fits perfectly with one of Ingka Group and IKEA’s core values in being careful with resources. With one third of all food harvested or produced around the world being lost or thrown away everyday, IKEA wants to inspire and enable people to think differently about food waste and incorporate sustainability into their everyday life.
Winnow Vision works by taking photos of wasted food as it’s thrown away, and uses the images to train itself to recognise what has been discarded. Over time, these systems will enable kitchens to automatically register food waste without any human interaction.
Krister Mattsson, Managing Director of Ingka Investments said: “Winnow has been a strong partner on our journey to reducing food waste in our IKEA stores by 50% by 2020. This investment supports growth and creates new opportunities to further accelerate the positive impact of food waste prevention. We are focused to increase the use of digital tools and analytics to both create the IKEA store of tomorrow and to deliver on IKEA’s sustainability ambition.”
See how IKEA UK & Ireland worked with Winnow to provide solutions to food waste.
