Speakers at this Event

Jamie Fortescue, British/Belgian, born 1966, joined the European Starch Industry Association, Starch Europe, in January 2012 as its managing director. Supported by a team of six staff, his role is to represent the interests of EU starch producers to the EU institutions and other EU stakeholders.
From 2014-2011, Jamie was the Director General of Spirits Europe, the trade association representing EU spirits drinks producers. Prior to that, he was the director for international corporate affairs at the employment agency, Randstad, based in Amsterdam (1997-2004) and an account director at the public affairs consultancy, EPPA, based mainly from their offices in London and Brussels, but also Madrid and Warsaw (1992-1997). Working primarily on issues affecting the petfood and employment agency sectors. Before becoming involved in EU public affairs, Jamie worked in third world development (at London based Planco Consulting from 1989-91, and as a trainee at DG Development of the European Commission from 1988-89). Jamie was educated at Eton College and the University of East Anglia, and has a degree in French and Economics.

Cesare Varallo is a food lawyer in Italy who is also Vice President Business and Regulatory Affairs at Inscatech and founder offoodlawlatest.com. He is a leading expert and global advisor on food safety issues, food fraud prevention, crisis management and food labelling, with particular focus on EU, USA and Italian markets. He is a well-recognized speaker and author who is regularly involved in international conferences and scientific activities, as well as in policy effectiveness evaluation for international bodies (i.e. DG Sante of the EU Commission, UN agencies).

Simon has 18 years of experience analysing and understanding commodity markets. He is a director of Commoditia, an advisory business based in Singapore focussed on supporting investors in, and traders and processors of South East Asian commodities.

Previously, as a Vice President of Invenio, part of Olam International, Mr Bentley led the research for a macro commodity fund trading agricultural commodity futures using fundamental models. Before this, and as a Director of LMC International, Mr Bentley led for many years a team advising multinational agribusinesses, energy and chemical companies, as well as governments, on all aspects of carbohydrate and protein markets. Through many different assignments he has developed a deep understanding of the fundamental structural factors underpinning agricultural commodity prices, costs, trade and production, which he uses to help clients position themselves in the face of changing market conditions.

Mr Bentley is a graduate of Trinity College, Oxford University and the London School of Economics.

Malgozarta is a lawyer by profession, entrepreneur by practice, with over 15 years of experience in the field of preparation and implementation of investment projects and the creation of start-up companies (in sectors of construction materials, telecommunication, consulting and packaging).

Biotrem is a Polish technology company developing an innovative production process of bio-based tableware and packaging. Biotrem’s main product line is fully biodegradable disposable tableware produced from the compressed wheat bran The patented technology allows them to manufacture  biodegradable disposable tableware from sustainable organic raw materials, such as wheat bran, corn bran, cassava by-products, seaweed or even algae.

Kelly Vermeer is head of Purchasing and Business Development at Looop based in The Netherlands. She started in this role after 10+ years experience in export of specialized animal nutrition worldwide. Due to her a passion for circularity she moved to Looop, a company that is specialised in the valorisation of organic residual streams in markets like livestock nutrition, but also insects, petfood and bio-based materials. She is responsible for the procurement of those residual streams, servicing the producers in the food, beverage and fermentation industry. And the development of strategic partnerships for new innovative co-product applications.

Ms Dejonckheere holds a degree in agronomic sciences from the Faculté des Sciences agronomiques de Gembloux (Belgium). She has specialised in European policies affecting agriculture.  She has worked for Copa-Cogeca for over 30 years.

Mr. Rogers is the CEO and co-founder of Bonumose, Inc., a food ingredient and enzyme innovation company based in Virginia, USA. Mr. Rogers has 30 years of business experience as a technology company founder, CEO, investor, adviser and attorney. Earlier in his career, Mr. Rogers founded an animal health company using technology licensed from a U.S.-based research university. Prior to his start-up experience, Mr. Rogers was a litigation and corporate lawyer for 11 years. Mr. Rogers is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Virginia School of Law. He and his wife have two sons and live in the United States

María Rodríguez Jiménez, originally from Spain, with a background in Biotechnology focusing on Health. Graduated in Msc of Health Food Innovation Management. I joint ME-AT The Alternative as Product Developer focusing in the recipe design of new innovative plant based products.

Václav Kurel is the founder and CEO of the Carboneg project. It is a soil carbon sequestration project based on the promotion of regenerative agriculture. His team teaches farmers how to increase humus in the soil, measures the results and rewards them for the CO2 they sequester. Carboneg is funded by the profits of Benefit Management - a 20-year-old company founded and 100% owned by Václav. It has 100 employees and provides a flexible employee benefits platform.

Dr. Kerstin Burseg is Food Chemist with a Ph.D in Flavour Sciences. For the past 20 years she has followed her passion for translating science into healthy and sustainable food solutions at various organisations such as NIZO Food Research B.V., Ohly GmbH and EIT Food. Since March 1st 2022 she has been Head of Research & Product Development at 
GoodMills Innovation, Hamburg. GoodMills Innovation is part of the GoodMills Group, Europe’s leading milling corporation. We are dedicated to developping solutions for healthier products, better taste, a smaller ecological footprint, easier processing and raw material savings with a focus on artisan bakery, the baking industry, plant-based texturates and snacks. 

Raphael is a food technologist with more than ten years of extensive experience in food development and surrounding fields such as QM and Supply Chain. 

As Head of the Technical Center at Herbafood, Raphael and his team work on the development of innovative and process-oriented solutions for the food industry. The focus is on texturing with multifunctional citrus and apple fibers and natural coloring with apple extracts

Paulo Teixeira is one of the co-founders of Mycorena and is today leading the company’s innovation and R&D. He has a PhD in bioengineering and more than 10 years of experience in developing microorganisms and bioprocesses involving fermentation. His current focus is on development of sustainability solutions and products using biology and deep tech. He has a background both in biotechnology research and entrepreneurial activities, including marketing and business development, an inventor of 13 distinct patent families and author of peer-reviewed articles with more than 300 citations.

Vidyanath (Vee) Gururajan is a co-inventor and Managing Director of RootExtracts Limited, Managing Director of group agri-tech companies and an Executive Board Director at Branston Ltd, potato retail packer in the UK with a varied portfolio.

Dr. Bernhard Seidl studied technical chemistry at the Vienna University of. In 2006 he did his doctorate at the Institute of Applied Synthetic Chemistry in the field of macromolecular chemistry on the development of new photoinitiator systems.
He has been working at Agrana Research and Innovation Center GmbH (ARIC) since 2007 and heads the “Paper and Adhesives” working group of the Starch Non-Food department. Together with his group he develops starch products for the paper, corrugated cardboard and adhesive industries and has also published different publications and patents in this field. He is further interested in special analytic methods such as SEC-MALLS for molar mass distribution, scanning electron microscopy and rheology.