Montreal, Canada & London, UK - September 13, 2023 - Relocalize, the market leader in hyper-local food manufacturing, has received the prestigious Best Climate Change Innovation in Carbon Emissions & Clean Energy award at the CogX Award Ceremony. Hosted at London's iconic O2 arena, the 7th Annual CogX Award Ceremony applauds trailblazers in innovation from around the world, honoring those who envision and drive a better future.
The CogX award was selected by a panel of experienced CXOs and investors united by a common mission: "to help society realize the biggest transformational opportunities of our time, address the many complex challenges along the way and work to answer the question: how do we get the next 10 years right?" Previous recipients include AstraZeneca, Microsoft, Henkel, and leaders like Greta Thunberg.
The Best Climate Change Innovation Award acknowledges pioneers in the industry who develop clean and sustainable technologies offering immediate and practical solutions to combat climate change. Relocalize aims to revolutionize food supply chains by decentralizing conventional manufacturing plants into a network of distributed hyper-local micro-factories. This approach positions food production, packaging, and distribution in close proximity to distribution centers, achieving localized fulfillment and eliminating unnecessary "middle-mile" transportation, a significant contributor to climate change.
In March 2023, Relocalize successfully deployed the world's first autonomous micro-factory for food and beverage manufacturing in collaboration with Southeastern Grocers and the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN). The company's team plans to rapidly scale up operations by installing multiple new micro-factories in 2024, with the ambition of expanding into the $1 trillion+ global beverage industry in the future.
"Winning the CogX award will empower Relocalize to spearhead a movement aimed at eliminating the need for long-haul trucking of food products." said Wayne McIntyre, Chief Executive Officer of Relocalize. "Over 20% of food-related emissions stem from transportation. Electrifying trucks is critically important, but we believe eliminating them completely through localization is the ultimate goal."
"More than 60% of all foods available in the U.S. undergo transformation and manufacturing. While relocalization of farm produce has been widely discussed, we are pioneering this approach for manufactured food and beverage products," added Gordon So, Sustainability & Business Development Manager of Relocalize. "Given the worsening climate crisis, our planet urgently requires creative yet pragmatic solutions."
About Relocalize
Relocalize is a technology startup that sells automated food production platforms as a service (PaaS) to grocery and convenience retailers. These micro-factories are located at retailer distribution and fulfillment centers, where they produce CPG products on-demand. Each micro-factory performs all of the processes of a traditional factory (e.g., production, processing, material handling, packaging, palletizing, inventory management, food safety) hyper-locally at ~1/20th scale. Their goal is to disrupt the $1+ trillion ice & beverage CPG category by hyper-localizing production to eliminate 100% of transportation CO2 and waste.
About CogX Festival
The award ceremony is part of the CogX Festival 2023, and with 90,000 audiences, 1,000+ startups and 500 speakers. It is one of the most predominant tech conferences in the world, featuring the AI & DeepTech Summit, Industry Transformation Summit, Global Leadership Summit and Expo. The 3 days agenda covers inspirational talks, incredible networking, and direct access to all the latest innovations.
