The
Food Innovation with Complete Cycle by CMU’s Science and Technology Park (STeP)
is first of its kind in northern
Thailand, and aims to reform food products to enhance value and create income.
Associate
Professor Dr. Pitiwat Wattanachai, Deputy Director of STeP, said the goal is to
promote the prototype factory for developing potential goods during the COVID –
19 situation for the Agro-Culture and Food industry in Northern Thailand.
Chiang
Mai University has assigned Science and Technology Park (Pilot Plants for
Production) to produce products from surplus agricultural products and thereby creating
employment for students that have been financially impacted by the COVID – 19
situation. Since February the operation has been adapted to produce lychee
mineral water with vitamin and dried queen tomato and is a pilot innovative
project to utilize surplus products in Northern Thailand.
Prototype
Factory of Food Innovation with Complete Cycle is has 4 lines of production
1. Acid
Food Process;
2.
Low Acid food Process;
3. Dehydration
Food Process
4.
Advanced Food Process
The Prototype
Factory has already has already processed 500 kilograms of mangoes to produce
1,200 kilograms in products as below:
- Crispy
mango that has been dried by a hot air oven and a microwave vacuum drier
- Mango
juice, whereby the it shelf life is extended
- Mango
syrup where the mango has had food acid added to it and has been pasteurized
Prototype
Factory of Food Innovation with Complete Cycle plans to distribute these products
to consumers for their evaluation and to develop this into a business by
creating a startup under the eBusiness Technology Incubation.
Future operations/projects aim to
effectively raise the level of food innovation for entrepreneurs in the agro
and local food industry in the Northern region.
The
prototype factory for food innovation has a goal to develop products in response
to the
needs of markets, conducting research and testing new products continuously in
order to build confidence for entrepreneurs that the outcome will be
beneficial. There are more than 100 entrepreneurs annually creating standard
products and not less than 700 entrepreneurs have created new innovative food products
within the last 5 years, increasing product competition from research and
development and creating state-of-the-art products both domestically and
internationally, generating an added value of more than 10%, worth more than
2,100 million baht. In addition, this resulted in labor employment of skilled
employees, and there are 1,600 enterprises that involve labor for production in
SMEs and startups, raising the level of trade and investment in the Northern
region.