Creative workshop on forest berry products at Torsåker farm

Most of the forest berries picked for commercial purposes in Sweden are cleaned and frozen immediately after picking. The frozen berries are sold to berry wholesalers who in turn sell the berries to berry processing companies in Sweden and abroad. During the berry season, consumers can also buy fresh Swedish blueberries and lingonberries via private vendors, markets and on a small scale in shops. During the rest of the year, frozen or dried Swedish forest berries are mainly offered, and they have found it increasingly difficult to compete with fresh American blueberries, which are available all year round in stores. This is one of the challenges we worked on during the workshop at Torsåker farm.

Another challenge is that forest berries used for juice leave a side stream in the form of berry press cake that is either high value and can be used for oil extraction or is somewhat less high value and then used as an energy raw material instead of food. This challenge was also addressed at the workshop and several prototypes of new products with berry pomace as an ingredient were presented and tested, including bread, vegetable steaks and potato chips.

The day at Torsåker Farm began with Anna Henning Moberg, Head of Operations at Axfoundation's Development Centre for Sustainable Food of the Future, presenting the working model that she and her colleagues use when developing new products. She said that it is important to ensure at an early stage that the products can be sold via a profitable business model where everyone in the value chain benefits. Anna had also prepared prototype packaging for Swedish premium forest berries that were used as inspiration during the workshop.

During the workshop, it was discussed how we can change the current system and market with imported American blueberries by developing an attractive niche product with Swedish premium forest berries and make it grow and take market shares to eventually create a completely new and more sustainable system based on Swedish forest berries. Changing existing food systems often requires work on several levels and through collaboration throughout the value chain, which we recognised during the workshop.