NCI Cereal Innovators Webinar Series | Featuring Sue Marshall

Sue Marshall, NETZRO SBC

Each month, NCI updates the “Cereal Innovators'' webinar series that offers insight into the world of baking and cereal grains. During the webinar, participants heard from Sue Marshall, an entrepreneur, founder and CEO of NETZRO, SBC. Sue presented on sustainable food solutions, upcycled grains, and her company. NETZRO is a food technology platform that creates sustainable upcycled ingredients from food and beverage byproducts. Food waste is a prominent problem in the U.S. but there is a factor that tends to be forgotten about, byproducts of food production. Byproducts are not included in the 40% of food in the U.S. that is not consumed, making that statistic even more problematic.

NETZRO SBC machinery for grain byproduct processing

Today, Sue highlighted grain byproducts and what can be done with them to increase sustainability. One huge grain consumer is the liquor industry. Breweries and distilleries are responsible for over 20 billion pounds of grain byproduct wasted in the U.S. every year. Sue discussed the process of how NETZRO helps decrease this amount of waste. The grain byproduct is mixed with water when it comes their direction, so the grain is turned over constantly and dehydrated using an infrared heat. The end result will then be treated and transported before it makes its way onto the grocery store shelf. A craft brewery in Arizona is practicing upcycling by using their grain byproduct to make pretzels with the slogan, “Have your beer and eat it too.” 

The Upcycled Food Association 2022 impact highlights

Upcycling was recently stamped as the word to define reusing byproducts to make a higher quality product. Although the U.S. is one of few to advertise upcycling, it is not the only country practicing it. In fact other countries have been upcycling far longer. Sue is a member and on the board of directors for The Upcycled Food Association, which has been a huge part in raising awareness and bringing sustainable countries together. They created The Upcycled Certification that can be found on the back of food packaging that contains the verified amount of upcycled ingredients. This has been an exciting development for other countries to be a part of and get certified. In the short amount of time UFA has been around, they have already seen a 32% year on year increase in membership, a 118% year on year increase in the number of Upcycled Certified products and ingredients, and reached over 1 million consumers. 

What can you do to support upcycling? 

• Support Upcycled Food Association

• Eat upcycled 

• Drink beer 

• Create new PUI’s 

For more information about future webinars offered at NCI, click here.

To watch the recording, click the video below.