The Belgrade-based company Baby Food Factory has won the Aurea 2019 Investment of the Year Award, given out by the business portal eKapija for the 11th year in a row
The award was handed out to the laureate at the official ceremony at Aeroklub Belgrade by the minister for innovations and technological development at the Government of Serbia, Nenad Popović.
On this occasion, he pointed to the importance of the development of the IT sector, as it was the IT industry that recorded higher exports than Fiat and Smederevska Zelezara for the first time in 2018.
“This is the export of Serbian knowledge, as engineers are the carriers of innovations in Serbia. South of Munich and Vienna, Serbia has the best engineers, and we must do everything to have as many as possible and to have more than 51% students enrol at technical faculties in Serbia,” Minister Popović pointed out.
Popović gave special acknowledgement to faculties of technical sciences in Serbia, pointing out that it is in technical sciences that the future lies for all children in Serbia. Handing out the award to Baby Food Factory, he pointed out that each company that was nominated deserved to get Aurea 2019.
Baby Food Factory opened in October 2018 in Dobanovci. The mission of the team behind this investment was to offer healthy, high-quality food for children. This is a greenfield investment worth EUR 34 million.
“The Investment of the Year Award is a special acknowledgement for our company and the proof that Baby Food Factory has been recognized as a project which helps to bring the local baby food industry back to the place it deserves, but also to improve the exporting potentials in this segment. This investment is truly an important step forward in the domestic baby food market, as we’ve brought new production standards and offered our consumers high quality, healthy baby food,” said Željko Ciganović, the CEO of Baby Food Factory.
In addition to the main award, eKapija has also given out two special acknowledgements. The innovation award went to Alfa Kima from Knjazevac for its innovative design of heat pumps featuring the R290 gas, under the protected name of PropSafe. This award was handed out by Vladislav Lalić, Country Manager at IKEA.
“It is my special pleasure to hand out the innovation award today because innovations are immeasurably important in the world we live and work in. As Canadian Prime Minister said in Davos in 2018: “the pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again,” Lalić pointed out.
The social usefulness award went to the BioSense Institute in Novi Sad for the development of the first Digital Farm in Serbia and to Delta Holding for their Naše Selo project.
The president of this year’s jury was Vojin Senk, a professor at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, who emphasized the importance of such awards. Professor Senk invited companies to apply for awards and projects such as Aurea, but also the media to write about innovations as much as possible, as they will thereby incite good projects and ideas, but also motivate young people to stay in Serbia.
Other shortlisted projects this year include Swan – Compact scanner for digitalization of archival materials; Ott System – Natural ergonomic sleeping system; Daktilograf Engine – Speech-to-text platform; and VOZZi – Mobile road help app.