TNO believes 3D food printing is a great opportunity for the shaping and structuring of novel food products.
Additive manufacturing, popularly known as 3D printing, has been called the next industrial revolution and is currently employed for many manufacturing steps using traditional materials like plastics and metals. Food will be the next big step for the technology, claims TNO, allowing a completely new method of production.
The technique has recently shown to have great potential for the layered building of complete 3D, well-structured, multi-material food products starting from a series of base ingredients. Such a technology could have a tremendous impact, according to TNO, as it has several large advantages.
These include the fact that it has an enormously high material use efficiency, and so could result in an (almost) zero waste food processing process. Additive manufacturing is also said to have the potential to use alternative food materials (such as proteins from algae or other low carbon footprint sources) and turn them into a range of well-structured, healthy, tasty, and sustainable food products with good consumer acceptance (meat replacement products, for example).
TNO says that additive manufacturing offers high production flexibility, enabling producers to rapidly alternate between different ingredients and products as well as their production scale, allowing a fast response to market requirements. Beyond this, the company believes that the technique provides complete food design freedom which will facilitate rapid product innovation.
Indeed TNO believes various projects are currently showing the impact this technology will have on the way we look at the future of food.
