NEXT KITCHEN 2025 : Celebrating Innovation in Food Tech

As part of the Cabinet Office's Regional Hub City Promotion Program, the NEXT KITCHEN 2025 food tech and startup inbound promotion initiative was held in collaboration with the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) Kobe office, Hyogo Prefecture, and the City of Kobe.

The main goal of this program is to address social issues in the food sector by promoting business matching between overseas startups with cutting-edge technologies and Japanese food-related companies, creating mutually beneficial collaboration opportunities, strengthening inbound activity, and contributing to the branding of Kobe’s food sector.

The program is entering its third phase this year, and over 50 applications were received from innovative food tech startups around the world. Ten companies were selected and visited Japan during the program period. They stayed in Kobe from February 4 to 7, 2025.

In addition, 25 domestic food-related companies participated as partners, and a total of 50 individual business meetings were held. Furthermore, at the Global Food Tech Conference held at Kobe Kitano Nosta on February 6th, startups delivered pitches to an audience of over 130 people. Angela Tay, an international investor from AgFunder in the field of food and agri-tech, also visited Japan and delivered a keynote speech. The entire program concluded successfully.

Through this program, based on needs assessments from domestic companies, the scope of overseas startups was narrowed from the outset, leading to early-stage NDA discussions, PoC engagements, and investment considerations between overseas startups and Japanese companies. This resulted in tangible outcomes.

This initiative marks an important step toward revitalizing the food tech industry with a global perspective. It goes beyond being just a collaboration event between startups and Japanese companies, and it is expected that through this program, further collaboration across various sectors will progress.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the 9 startup companies, partner companies that participated in the program, as well as to all the attendees. We look forward to further developing our relationship with Innovation Dojo Japan and walking together toward the creation of new innovations.

Program Participated Startups
Agrifreeze (Singapore)　Alterpacks Pte Ltd (Singapore)　ClearCOGS (USA)　Kitchen Robotics (Israel)　N&E Innovations (Singapore)　Prefer (Singapore)　Squee Foods (Finland)Umami Bioworks (Singapore)Wada FoodTech Group Co., Ltd (Hong Kong）

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