Student Startup - Banana Business

The Banana Business is a Student Startup consists of Daphne, Marit, Minke, Simone and Joëlle who study together at Maastricht University - Campus Venlo. The mission of these enthusiastic students is: “reduce food waste by making tasty products from banana peels”.

The company originated from a project for the Master Health Food Innovation Management at Maastricht University-Campus Venlo. They have previously worked as a team on a project in which they made tagliatelle from onion skins to reduce food waste. “Although the pasta itself was not very tasty, we continued to find the idea of food waste interesting. That is why we started looking at other residual flows and that is how we ended up with banana peels. ” Did you know that bananas (after apples) are the most commonly eaten fruit in the Netherlands? According to the Netherlands Nutrition Center, we eat 20 grams of bananas per day in the Netherlands, which equates to about 720 million bananas per year. There is a peel around all those bananas, which is just thrown away. Sin! The girls at Banana Business want to reduce this waste and turn the peel into a vegetable alternative to meat: Pulled Peel. "We make this from banana peels and a secret spice mix." They get the peels through Neder Banaan, a company they work with. They currently grow bananas themselves in their greenhouse in the Dutch town called Ede. The goal of Banana Business is to find multiple streams of banana peels and turn them into their own Pulled Peel.

They are currently waiting for the first harvest of Neder Banana bananas and are preparing to process the peels. “We also test many recipes with our product. Pulled Peel, for example, is delicious on wraps, in sandwiches and also on flammkuchen! ”

Do you want to follow the developments around this great Student Startup? You can find them on Instagram, Facebook and via www.banana-business.com