Gyeonggi Research Institute “Food tech industrial ecosystem must be led by startups”

There was an opinion that startups that utilize collaboration platforms and cooperation networks should take the lead in revitalizing the startup ecosystem in order to develop the food tech industry, which is a future growth engine industry.

Gyeonggi Research Institute announced on the 25th that it had published a report titled ‘New growth engine food tech core, startup ecosystem’ containing these contents.

Food tech is an industrial field that is attracting attention as a core technology that will lead the growth of future agriculture in the 21st century, from production to consumption, where food and 4th industrial technology meet.

From 2017 to 2020, the average annual growth rate of the related industrial market was 38% globally and 31.4% in Korea, showing rapid growth and emerging as a future growth industry.

As of 2020, the global food tech market size is estimated at $554.2 billion, and the domestic market size is estimated at approximately KRW 61 trillion (10.7% of the food industry market size of KRW 570 trillion).

As economic issues are alleviated along with technological innovation, market demand for food tech is expanding significantly due to issues such as expansion of untact consumption, relief of environmental burden, and increased demand for customized functional health foods.

The government has also presented goals related to supporting startup growth, such as nurturing 30 food tech unicorn companies by 2027, providing priority support for food tech venture start-up funds, and creating a dedicated fund worth KRW 100 billion.

Accordingly, the Gyeonggi Research Institute suggested that it is necessary to lead the development of the domestic food tech industry focusing on fostering startups, and proposed a direction and promotion strategy for fostering the food tech industry.

Specifically, it suggested ▲establishing a customized startup support system for each startup type and growth stage considering industry characteristics, and ▲expanding the size of the fund for food tech startups.

In addition, it was also proposed to ▲ strengthen appropriate systems for the food tech industry and support system to dominate domestic and international markets ▲ establish a food tech start-up belt linked between the central government and local governments ▲ create and support field-oriented food tech start-up complexes, etc.

Suhaeng Lee, senior researcher at Gyeonggi Research Institute, emphasized, “Considering that the food tech industry is led by startups, we need to revitalize the startup ecosystem to strengthen the fostering of food tech startups.”

[ 경기신문 = 이근 기자 ]