NoPalm Ingredients Named a 2026 Food Planet Prize Finalist
One of four initiatives selected globally from a rigorous, multi-stage evaluation, including an on-site visit.
We are proud to announce that NoPalm Ingredients has been shortlisted as a finalist for the 2026 Curt Bergfors Food Planet Prize, the world's largest environmental award in food and agriculture, carrying a top prize of USD 1.5 million.
This year, out of initiatives evaluated from across the globe, only four were chosen to make the shortlist. NoPalm Ingredients is one of them.
What the Food Planet Prize Is, and Why It Matters
The Food Planet Prize, established by the Curt Bergfors Foundation, is awarded to initiatives that demonstrate exceptional potential to transform food and agriculture systems in a way that is both environmentally restorative and scalable. It is an award for demonstrated, real-world impact.
The evaluation process is deliberately thorough. It includes multiple rounds of review by an expert Prize Committee, detailed technical and operational due diligence, and critically, an on-site visit to assess the initiative's actual implementation, team, and impact on the ground. Only initiatives that pass every stage of this scrutiny make it to the shortlist.
Being named a finalist is a meaningful signal: it means independent, world-class experts have assessed NoPalm Ingredients and concluded that what we are building is real, rigorous, and ready to scale.
“Being selected as a Food Planet Prize finalist is among the most meaningful external validations we have received. The Prize Committee’s due diligence process is genuinely rigorous: they visited our facilities, examined our technology and our numbers in detail. Their conclusion gives us confidence that what we are building is not just scientifically sound, but commercially and systemically ready. We look forward to the jury event in Sweden and to continuing to demonstrate what fermentation can do for the food system.”
Why NoPalm Ingredients Was Selected
Palm oil is one of the most consequential commodities in the global food system. It appears in nearly 50% of fast-moving consumer goods, from food to personal care to pet food, because it is cheap, versatile, and highly functional. But its production has driven catastrophic tropical deforestation, wiped out biodiversity, and generated significant CO₂ emissions. Demand is not slowing down.
NoPalm Ingredients has developed a fundamentally different approach.
We use fermentation to grow oleaginous yeast in industrial tanks, the same process used to brew beer, fed on food industry side streams such as potato peels and dairy by-products. The result is a high-performance fat that structurally and functionally mirrors palm oil, shea butter, or cocoa butter.
What makes our approach particularly compelling for industry adoption:
Drop-in compatibility: Our fats can be used in existing products without reformulation or process changes, removing one of the biggest barriers to switching.
No tropical land dependency: Production is geographically independent, not tied to ecosystems that climate change is increasingly destabilizing.
Decentralized, scalable production: Our model places fermentation facilities co-located with existing side stream suppliers, sugar refineries, starch processors, dairy manufacturers, reducing logistics emissions and creating local economic value.
Circular by design: The yeast biomass left after oil extraction can be repurposed as animal feed or pet food, closing the loop on waste.
“NoPalm Ingredients is an elegant, systems-aware solution that could quietly decarbonize supply chains and reduce pressure on ecosystems vulnerable to climate extremes.”
What Comes Next
The four finalists, NoPalm Ingredients (Netherlands), APCNF (India), Conscious Kitchen (USA), and The Savanna Institute (USA), will travel to Båstad, Sweden in early June 2026 to present before the Food Planet Prize jury during a multi-day award event.
The winner will be announced on June 2nd, 2026. The top prize is USD 1.5 million.