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A Portuguese innovation that promises to revolutionize food safety and reduce food waste has won the 2026 National Innovation Award.

PetriTag®, developed by AlmaScience, has won the 2026 National Innovation Award (Prémio Nacional de Inovação, PNI) in the “Agriculture, Food and Beverage” category. The award was presented yesterday at the Nova SBE campus in Carcavelos.

PetriTag® arrives at this award with strong momentum: a win at Expo Fish Portugal 2025, a national television feature in the “Futuro Hoje” segment of SIC’s newscast, and now Portugal’s highest innovation distinction.

Foodborne illness and the spoilage of fresh food cost the food industry billions of euros every year in recalls, litigation and wasted product. According to the FAO, roughly one-third of all food produced for human consumption - about 1.3 billion metric tons per year, worth some €900 billion - is lost or wasted, much of it in perfectly good condition, discarded because there is no way to confirm that it is safe. The cause of spoilage is bacterial activity inside the package, which today goes unmeasured until the damage is already done.

Two forces are now converging on this blind spot. The EU’s Digital Product Passport (DPP) will require every package to carry its own data. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) will require that packaging be sustainable. Together, these regulations demand something that today’s methods - expiry dates, temperature logs, visual inspection - cannot deliver: real proof of a product’s condition, on its own packaging, without that packaging generating more waste.

A label that never stops watching

PetriTag® is a paper-based colorimetric label that continuously monitors bacterial contamination in fresh food, on the packaging itself: no laboratory, no batteries, no electronics. It reads like a traffic light - a color change that anyone can see, from the packaging line to the store shelf to the kitchen. That visibility works both ways: it detects contamination early, to protect people, and it gives clear proof of freshness, so that safe food is not thrown away on assumption.

Built for the regulation ahead

PetriTag® was designed to sit exactly where the Digital Product Passport and the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation meet: a paper-based, recyclable and compostable label that adds a safety signal without compromising the packaging, ready to provide real-time condition data from producer to consumer.

Drawing international attention

PetriTag® has been gaining visibility and interest among multinationals active in the poultry, meat, fish and seafood supply chains.

Sustainable by design

Developed under the PRR Mobilizing Agenda “Embalagem do Futuro” (Packaging of the Future), PetriTag® follows AlmaScience’s ecodesign approach and the principle of "Appropriate Lifespan": matching each product’s lifespan to its function, without persisting beyond what is necessary. The label is recyclable and compostable through existing channels and does not compromise the recyclability of the packaging it is applied to. More than a concept, this principle reflects AlmaScience’s purpose: to develop technology that reaches the market and becomes sustainable products with added value.

“We developed PetriTag® to address a concrete problem: to give a simple, visible indication of bacterial contamination in fresh food, without laboratory analysis or electronics,” said Bruno Veigas, a researcher on the PetriTag® project. “Seeing this work recognized by the National Innovation Award is an enormous validation for the entire team.”

“This award confirms that PetriTag® responds to a real need in the food industry,” concluded Carlos Silva, President of AlmaScience. “Our ambition is to take paper-based technology from the laboratory to the market, and to give every player in the food chain, from producer to consumer, a shared, visible signal they can trust.”

Open to partnerships

AlmaScience is building connections with food producers, packaging companies, retailers and investors to take PetriTag® from validated technology to commercial deployment. To explore a pilot or a partnership, get in touch.

The 2026 National Innovation Award is organized by Jornal de Negócios, Banco BPI and Claranet Portugal, with ANI - the National Innovation Agency and COTEC Portugal as institutional partners and Nova SBE as knowledge partner.

About AlmaScience

AlmaScience is a collaborative innovation laboratory (CoLAB) and technology incubator for sustainable functional materials and green electronics, based in Caparica and Aveiro. Its multidisciplinary team of around 25 PhDs and master’s-level researchers in fields such as chemistry, biology, materials science, paper technology and electronics turns scientific research into commercially viable, sustainable products.

AlmaScience is the hub of the Sustainable Innovation Ecosystem, alongside Imprensa Nacional - Casa da Moeda, The Navigator Company, Grupo Clara Saúde, Firmo, MEXT: Mota-Engil Next, Super Bock Group, TMG Automotive, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, NOVA.ID FCT, Raiz, Fraunhofer Portugal and the Municipality of Almada. Its technologies include PaperWeight AI, PetriTag® and GELA.