PRESS RELEASE · 7 OCTOBER 2026 · BARCELONA
Food waste the EU says can't be measured: the technology measuring it wins two awards
Finnish company Collo received Alimentaria FoodTech's sustainability award on 6 October for technology that stops product going down the drain in dairies and beverage plants, a week after its analysis estimated that EU factories pour away up to 40% more food than official figures count. A second jury, the DLG, has named the same platform a gold medal winner of the International FoodTec Award 2027.
Barcelona, 7 October 2026. Collo, the Finnish company whose technology lets dairies and beverage plants see and stop the product they lose down the drain, received the FoodTech Innova Award 2026 in the Sustainability & Circular Economy category at Alimentaria FoodTech in Barcelona on 6 October. The jury recognised Collo's platform, whose inline analyzer reads the state of the liquid inside the pipe in real time, so losses are stopped on the line instead of discovered in the wastewater weeks later.
Collo was one of four winners this year. Alimentaria FoodTech describes the winning entry as "a platform based on artificial intelligence that monitors liquid processes in real time to reduce the waste of water, energy and product".
It is the second jury to single out the platform this autumn. On 1 October the DLG (German Agricultural Society) named Collo one of five gold medal winners of the International FoodTec Award 2027. The medal will be presented at Anuga FoodTec in Cologne on 23 February 2027.
Collo receives the FoodTech Innova Award 2026 for Sustainability & Circular Economy at Alimentaria FoodTech, Barcelona, 6 October 2026. Photo: Collo
The awards follow Collo's analysis, published on 29 September, showing that food drained with wastewater in Europe's dairies and beverage plants adds up to an estimated 1.4 to 4.6 million tonnes a year, between 13% and 42% more than the food waste EU manufacturing officially reports. In any liquid process that is where most of the everyday food loss goes, and none of it counts towards the EU's binding 10% reduction target, because a measurement rule from 2019 excludes anything "drained as or with wastewater" on the grounds that it could not be measured.
Inside a plant the losses are small and constant. A valve switches a few seconds late when a line changes from cream to milk. A rinse runs longer than the pipe needs. A batch is cut off early to protect quality. The Collo RF Analyzer is installed inline on the process line, and its radio-frequency sensor reads the liquid itself as it flows through the pipe, so the control system switches on the product, not on a timer. At Valio's Joensuu dairy, one line cut its pushout losses by 92% this way and recovers 260,000 litres of product a year. Collo calls the destination the Zero-Loss Factory: a plant where nothing is lost unmeasured, and nothing avoidable is lost at all. Every litre kept out of the drain is product that is sold rather than written off, and it no longer takes the water, energy and cleaning chemicals that went down the drain with it. At a large bottling plant, shorter cleaning cycles saved 4 million litres of water and 10% of the energy.
"An award is welcome. Measured litres are better," said Jani Puroranta, CEO of Collo.
"Every plant already knows it loses product to the drain; it shows in the monthly mass balance. What both juries recognised is that the loss can now be seen as it happens and stopped. The EU rules were written for the technology of 2019. That technology is now on the market, so why is reporting this loss still voluntary, when counting it would point the target at the one loss that can still be cut?"
The two awards are Collo's third and fourth industry awards in little over a year, after the World Beverage Innovation Award 2025 and the World Dairy Innovation Award 2026. Collo (ColloidTek Oy) was founded in Tampere in 2017 and works with dairy and beverage manufacturers in 16 countries.
Notes to editors
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The analysis behind the awards: Collo's 29 September release on the food waste the EU does not count, with images: www.collo.fi/press-release-food-waste-europe-doesnt-count
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FoodTech Innova Awards 2026 winners and finalists: alimentariafoodtech.com
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DLG announcement of the International FoodTec Award 2027 winners: dlg.org
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Press contact and interviews: Jani Puroranta, CEO, Collo · jani.puroranta@collo.fi · +358 50 517 9992 · interviews by phone or video in English and Finnish.
- Photos: the award photo on this page is free to use with the credit "Photo: Collo". Product and plant images are available with the 29 September release. Official photos of the ceremony from the organiser, credit "Photo: Alimentaria FoodTech": alimentariafoodtech.com gallery.
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About Collo. Collo is transforming how industries manage their liquid processes. Our breakthrough liquid analyzers based on radio frequency go beyond conventional inline sensors by capturing the complete fingerprint of liquids in real time. Powered by AI algorithms, this data reveals hidden product losses, wasted water, and quality deviations that typically remain invisible. For dairies and beverage producers, Collo means higher yields, lower costs, and more sustainable operations. Collo's goal is the Zero-Loss Factory: a plant where every cleaning cycle and product changeover is measured in real time, every loss is visible and every avoidable loss is stopped. For more information, visit www.collo.fi.