Food tech - a growing industry for people in IT and tech

Food tech is on the rise, and IT and tech skills are becoming increasingly important. For Greenfood, a leading grocery group in the field of healthy food, one of the success factors has been to expand recruitment beyond traditional food processing expertise and hire programmers, engineers and AI specialists. Now the Group is seeing increased interest from jobseekers with a tech background who want to join the food industry.

The food sector generates more than SEK 12 trillion in sales and is Europe’s largest industry. Despite the size of the sector, technological developments have not taken place on the same scale as in other industries. Greenfood is an exception. The company was among the first to use technology to scale up their food tech company Picadeli in the European market.

“Swedish food tech is on the rise, and Picadeli is a clear example of this. One of the keys to our success has been to recruit tech expertise that has helped us scale up and automate our business, for example by developing our own digital tools that improve the ordering process, reduce food waste and make things easier for our customers,” says David von Laskowski, President and CEO of Greenfood and Picadeli.

Technological innovations in the food industry both help to automate processes and simplify matters for consumers. At the same time, technology also leads to a more sustainable society, for example by reducing food waste or increasing transparency and traceability in the food chain.

The interest and opportunities inherent in innovative technology and digitalisation create numerous new interesting roles for people with IT and tech skills, and at Greenfood it is evident that more people with a technical background are being attracted to the industry.

“We get a lot of attention from people with tech skills who are curious about our business. We’ve already hired a large number of developers, engineers and data analysts with extensive experience from the automotive industry, the startup world or other tech sectors,” says David von Laskowski.

One important project with which the Group’s developers and tech experts are currently working is the reduction of food waste, a major problem in the food industry. A technology platform developed in-house uses AI to learn and become increasingly refined in its forecasts. This results in faster, more accurate orders, thus reducing the risk of products being thrown away unnecessarily.