The aim of the project it to reduce and ultimately eliminate labelling, date coding and packaging mistakes caused by human error in the produce and wider food supply chain. Each year many millions of pounds of produce is disposed of before it reaches the customer because it cannot be sold due to the information or date code on the pack being incorrect, which could lead to either safety, quality or legality issues. This will be achieved by understanding what causes errors and developing a system that ensure these stimuli are removed from the environment to encourage accuracy. The ultimate aim is that the learning of this project will be applied to all food production environments and potentially to other manufacturing operations.

This project has been instigated by Sainsbury's, working with their suppliers Tayto Group Limited and SK Foods, and Teesside University. The aim is to reduce oil use and degradation in the manufacture of fried foods, based on two product groups: crisps and snacks, and chilled fried ethnic snacks. The objectives of the project are: - To optimise oil management and reduce the speed with which oil oxidises to improve product shelf-life, reduce waste and potentially open up additional export market opportunities; - To improve frying process efficiency, thereby reducing oil pick-up in products, extending the life of frying oil, and reducing the amount of energy used to heat the products. Taste panels will be used throughout to assess the potential impact of the project on consumer perceptions of taste.

Cold plasma is an exciting new technology with a proven potential for rapid microbial decontamination of surfaces. A plasma state is generated by applying a high voltage to a gas, transforming it into a cocktail of reactive plasma species which may have high oxidation potential and therefore considerable food decontamination potential. Prepared produce decontamination is necessary to remove soil, foreign bodies and bacteria (potentially pathogenic) from the food surface but is notoriously difficult to achieve. Moreover, the different decontamination techniques used so far (chlorination, rapid chilling, et.c…) are applied on the product before it is packed meaning recontamination can occur from further handling prior to packing. This project proposes the use of a novel pulsed plasma system to inject plasma species in the food packaging at the point of sealing, thus providing a final decontamination hurdle directly in the pack without further recontamination risk. The objectives of the project are to prove this concept and demonstrate the improved shelf life and safety of a variety of food products (prepared salads, prepared fruit, prepared vegetables) .

Obesity levels in the UK represent a key public health issue, with 67% of its population living with overweight or obesity. People living with obesity are more likely to experience a range of health issues including heart conditions, and Type 2 diabetes. They are also more likely to be living in areas of high deprivation. Reducing obesity levels has been a public health priority in the UK for decades but we have not yet managed to achieve that goal. This is partly due to the range of factors that influence body weight. One key challenge facing people living with obesity is being able to afford a healthy, balanced diet. Nutritionally poor and energy-dense foods that are often ultra-processed, are cheaper and more readily available. To start to address this challenge, we need better evidence on how to support healthier food purchasing patterns to improve their health and wellbeing, while considering environmental impact and sustainability. Food insecurity is 'the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food'. Families on low incomes are more likely to be food insecure and they spend a greater proportion (three quarters) of their monthly food budget in supermarkets. Supermarket promotions, advertising, and online product placement decisions can impact this group's access to healthy foods. Importantly, healthy diets also need to be sustainable in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, and land use; described as the 'sustainability footprint'. Our research will bring together food insecure people living with obesity, consumers, retailers, policy makers, and academics to co-develop and test strategies that can support future transformative potential in the food system. Our diverse team of academic experts in social science, applied health, obesity, and data science, will combine our knowledge of large-scale population data with an understanding of lived experiences of food shopping for people living with obesity and food to develop practical solutions to promote sustainable and healthier food choices in this group. To achieve this, we have designed an innovative four-part project. Perspective: we will work with people living with obesity and food insecurity to understand the key issues facing them while shopping. We will also engage with the retail sector and policy makers to understand their perspectives too. This will identify limitations and barriers of current strategies and scope out future opportunities for our project to make sure our work remains relevant and useful. Big Data: we will use anonymous large-scale data (from >1.6 million shoppers) obtained from a national high-street supermarket (retailer) to understand what foods people buy, how healthy these purchases are, their sustainability footprints and how these choices vary across different household types including those on low income. This will help identify in- store changes that would encourage healthier and more sustainable food purchasing for people living with obesity and food insecurity. Solution Space: we will use the findings from the first two parts of this project to co-design new approaches and test these in-store and online assess their effect on healthier and sustainable food purchasing behaviours. We will also test and measure the effectiveness of these strategies in a group of people who are actively seeking to lose weight (MoreLife patient cohort) and living with food insecurity. This will help to identify strategies that can help transform supermarkets to promote healthier and more sustainable foods. Delivery: we will engage with food producers, food retailers, patient groups, policy makers, and charity group representatives to ensure our project is relevant and transformative. We will do this by sharing our findings with those groups, using webinars, social media, workshops, and research briefing notes.

Enhancing the energy performance of existing buildings in the UK is a vital step in the Government's pathway to net-zero carbon. If environmental targets are to be reached, R&D is required to understand the capabilities of low carbon technologies and how digital services can be used to better manage their energy use. In this context, novel building control approaches that can be derived from data-driven, cloud-based solutions is of high interest for building owners and operators who soon will need to upgrade outdated building management systems (BMS). Yet today there is limited implementation of such solutions due to 'hidden' installation costs, lack of standards and modularity and 'risk averse' attitudes in the building sector. Bridging the gap between the academic literature and real-world applications is hence paramount to support live implementation and explore the potential of greater connectivity. Under this context, the DEMSIS project employs a supermarket as a case study and uses it as a test bed to implement in real-time a model predictive control (MPC) scheme to enhance HVAC and refrigeration systems; the two most energy intensive services in a supermarket which are responsible for 45-60% of a store's overall electricity usage. MPC schemes work by predicting how a system will respond to a control change over the next 12-24 hours, considering other relevant forecasts such as energy prices and weather data. By understanding these future states, it allows the system to pre-emptively prepare for, for example, high electricity prices or cold weather, hence reducing its overall energy and carbon usage. As well as developing this control logic, the required hardware and software infrastructure will be designed and deployed in the pilot store to allow for real-world testing of the proposed MPC schemes. The proposed modelling and software framework will be replicable across a wide range of commercial buildings, lowering the barrier to entry for many businesses across the UK. Furthermore, due to the flexible nature of MPC formulation the proposed approach could incorporate additional constraints related to demand-side management for the grid, e.g. ensuring power thresholds aren't breached during peak periods. The challenge for researchers in this field is how best to integrate the abundant data being captured to coordinate the management of systems to reduce energy use in buildings. A combination of hardware components and software tools are required to update existing legacy control systems. If such upgrades take place, the academic literature suggests there is significant potential in enhancement of operational management by applying internet-of-things concepts to support real-time optimisation. In this project the researchers collaborate with a major food retailer (Sainsbury's Supermarkets) to implement cutting edge solutions that give insights into how future buildings should be operated. The DEMSIS project has as key objectives to: 1. Provide recommendations on the best hardware and software solutions that are compatible with existing controllers (e.g., HVAC). 2. Quantify the business case for implementing such novel solutions in a commercial building by conducting multiple tests in the supermarket. 3. Outline the technical and commercial barriers building operators are facing to implement smart control schemes. 4. Propose new key performance indicators that provide information on how heating and refrigeration systems are performing. 5. Give insights on how control cloud-based solutions can support the UK power system with regards to demand side management and smart-grid applications. Findings from the project will support enabling a cost-effective transition towards smarter digital services for the built environment. Transferring knowledge to key stakeholders in academia, industry, and policy makers responsible for the decarbonisation of the property sector.