KIINNS: Cleaning Made Obsolete
KIINNS story starts with a cup of coffee and a milk frother. Tzvika Furman was making a cup of coffee at home. He frothed the milk and set off to the tedious task of cleaning the frother. When he finally sat down to drink, the coffee was already cold. Furman, being a problem solver by nature, decided that there had to be a better way. He had no idea where his quest would take him
Furman realized that enjoying his cup of coffee while hot was dependent on the ability to completely eliminate the need to clean the frother. He used various materials, from plastic baggies to clingfilm, in an attempt to shield the frother's surface from becoming dirty. He then asked his father, Dr. Ehud Furman, a PhD in physics, to join forces and they worked together, experimenting.
They turned to people from the food industry to present their idea and realized that the problem was so much wider than they could ever have assumed. It was at that point they realized the long reaching implications of their research on the entire food industry.
Cleaning, one of the biggest issues the food industry faces
Cleaning industrial production lines is a huge global problem being faced by industrialists. Annually, manufacturers lose millions of dollars in the machinery down time needed to clean the equipment, added to the high cost of the detergents, chemicals and manpower. If you add the billions of liters of water waste, toxins, pollution and greenhouse gas emission you end up with a process that is not only extremely expensive and wasteful, but with detrimental effects on the environment and on our health. Even with all this, the real Achilles heel of the cleaning process is human error. “Clean is not clean, as we say in KIINNS”, says Tzvika Furman, CEO. “Misuse, mishandling, misunderstanding, can all result in contamination and cross-contamination, and even if everything is done by the book, at the end of a full, regulatory compliant cleaning session we still end up with resistant bacteria, allergen residues and chemicals in the food products. In the food industry alone, we are talking about more than 200 million people annually who fall sick from faulty cleaning processes, and 150,000 related deaths.”
Safe, sustainable kitchen innovation, saving you money
KIINNS stands for “Kitchen Innovation Simple”. The “S” also referring to Safety, Sustainability and Savings. “We started researching and found that the various companies dealing in large scale cleaning solutions were each aiming to improve one single aspect of the cleaning process. We understood that a comprehensive solution, designed at improving health safety, solving environmental aspects and reducing costs, had to eliminate the entire process altogether. Our goal is to make cleaning obsolete.” Explains Furman.
KIINNS has developed a technology that isolates the equipment from the processed ingredients it’s used for, creating an impenetrable barrier between the two. The novel solution includes a unique biodegradable polymer and an autonomous robotic system. Before the food processing cycle starts, the robotic system drives towards the equipment, scans it and learns the equipment's shape and geometry. The robot then applies KIINNS biodegradable-disposable-isolating-polymer by spraying it directly on the equipment's surface. The entire surface is coated 360 degrees and within minutes it hardens into a liner, shielding the surface from the food. When the food processing cycle is complete, the liner is instantly and automatically removed, and the equipment stays completely clean. Then, a new liner is applied on the surface and a new, sterile processing cycle can immediately start. In effect, there is no cleaning required, no time wasted, no pollutants and no place for human error, eliminating all industrial cleaning concerns.
From food to plastics and so much more
The implications are immense. The food industry alone has a 60-billion-dollar addressable market of B2B customers such as confectionaries, bakeries, dairy product producers, sweets, salads, meats as well as food service companies. “Food is huge, and it's just a beginning” explains Furman. “KIINNS will have a huge impact on the pharma, biotech, cosmetics, plastics and chemistry industries. In fact, in our trial phase we also completed a successful pilot in one of Israel’s largest plastics companies and are now preparing for our next trials in the meat and bakery industries in Europe. Led by Dr. Avi Yaakobovich, VP Materials and Applications, our material development has been completed, and our polymer was assessed and proven to be fully compliant with EU regulations for food-contact, allowing us to deploy our solution in food production lines. We are collaborating with some of the biggest names in the global food industry, each fascinated by our technology and its ability to eliminate cleaning entirely. KIINNS has repeatedly reached final stages, and even won, large scale global programs and competitions, emphasizing the traction we are making worldwide. Our potential, in effect, to revolutionize not only the face of the food industry, but of many other industries also, is huge and it is exciting to see it unfold.”
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