DSM invests in food freshness device company

DSM Venturing, the corporate venturing unit of Royal DSM N V, has made an investment in US-based Food Quality Sensor International Inc.

FQSI''s advanced sensor technology will be incorporated in packaging concepts for fresh products such as meat and poultry. This is DSM''s first equity investment in the field of specialty packaging, one of the emerging business areas selected in DSM''s strategy Vision 2010 - Building on Strengths.

DSM Venturing is an active investor in emerging companies and Venture Capital Funds in DSM''s strategic growth fields nutrition, pharma and performance materials. FQSI''s latest product SensorQ is a stick-on sensor label applied by the meat packer to the inside of meat and poultry packages. The label detects the gaseous byproducts of food-borne bacteria growing inside the package. The technology correlates to US and international standards of meat and poultry spoilage and is the only concept known to date to be able to sense freshness of meat in a cost-effective way. FQSI is currently in the final stages of testing and validating SensorQ™ and expects to launch the product later this year.

The investment in FQSI provides DSM a window on the market in food packaging in the US. Tony de Vrught, vice president EBA Specialty Packaging, said, "This is an important milestone for our activities in this new market. Next to our investment, FQSI will be one of the companies we will work with to develop intelligent packaging concepts."

Responding to trends such as growing food quality awareness, increasing interaction between a product and its packaging and upcoming changes in regulations, DSM''s specialty packaging group is working on the development of breakthrough packaging solutions for food products with innovative barrier properties relating to freshness, release of odors, and the ability to monitor the history of the product.

FQSI was incorporated in 2004, when The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. partnered with key members of the Draper sensor technology development team, Navigator Technology Ventures and Marco Bonné, an entrepreneur and food industry executive, to commercialise its food spoilage sensor technology. FQSI develops and commercialises novel technologies to detect the freshness levels of perishable foods. FQSI''s headquarters and laboratories are located in Lexington, Massachusetts.

DSM Venturing is an active investor in emerging companies and Venture Capital Funds in DSM''s strategic growth fields of nutrition, pharma and performance materials.