Six-figure funding secured for ‘digitalising a global food system’

6th May 2025

Sheffield Hallam University’s Advanced Food Innovation Centre (AFIC) and partners, have secured £670,000 from Innovate UK to continue their collaboration with cereal milling company, Koolmill.

Sheffield Hallam University’s Advanced Food Innovation Centre (AFIC) and partners, have secured £670,000 from Innovate UK to continue their collaboration with cereal milling company, Koolmill, to leverage AI to build more sustainable and efficient food systems.  

The University is building on its long-standing collaboration with Koolmill and Aston University through an Innovate UK (IUK) ‘Made Smarter Innovation Impact Booster’. 

The project will be led by Alex Shenfield, Hongwei Zhang and Augustine Ikpehai from Sheffield Hallam University. The ‘Booster’ project is designed to accelerate and amplify the impact of completed IUK projects. 

It builds on the previous ‘Made Smarter Innovation’ project that successfully demonstrated the feasibility of remotely monitoring and controlling Koolmill rice machinery and the capability to connect real time data to remote dashboards utilising 4G and 5G communications between the UK and India and the UK and Philippines. 

Professor Alex Shenfield, Professor of Machine Learning, said:

“This is an exciting opportunity to further innovate in advanced AI-approaches. By leveraging AI, we can take significant steps toward building more sustainable and efficient food systems – collaborating with Koolmill, we are blazing a trail in digitalising a global food system.” 

This project seeks to deliver a robust, reliable and commercially viable data platform which is fundamental to enable Koolmill to operate their novel machinery as a service business model. The 12-month project will enable development of the software platform, sensors, remote monitoring and enhance the capability to remotely support machines globally.

The project will develop digital capabilities that will position Koolmill as a global leader in rice processing - the five-year plan is to generate £100m in service fees from 1,500 machines in 2029.  

Rice is a staple food for 50% of the world's population and so this project is also an opportunity to transform a global food system that will feed 6 billion people by 2050. 

Alec Anderson, Founder and Managing Director at Koolmill, said:

“Working with rice millers on five different continents, over thirty years, we have been developing a novel and super-efficient milling process that will revolutionise rice processing globally.  

“IUK funding, in the UK and India, has been essential to our innovation; it has enabled us to work with academics and doctoral researchers here at the Advanced Food Innovation Centre to accelerate the impact. This booster will ensure we continue to develop and improve the technology at AFIC before real world testing within the rice industry globally.”