Food Upcycling Strategies Applied by The Listed Companies Involved in The Food Value Chain

Abstract This paper is aimed at the discovery of the main directions of a scientific discourse on food upcycling and cross-checking it with the perspective of leading food chain companies. Scientific discourse was analysed by systematic literature review using defined query and network analysis. The perspective of leading food chain companies was approached through the content analysis of annual reports of listed companies. A replicable analysis approach was developed and demonstrated on two samples of companies listed on two European stock exchanges. Bibliometric studies show that research on the upcycling topic is characterized by a high level of atomization, which may indicate that the research in this field is at an early stage. Qualitative research on non-financial annual reports published by selected companies has shown that companies do not widely use upcycling in business practice. The authors attribute this situation to, among others, the lack of a uniform reporting standard covering upcycling. Another conclusion from the study is that those companies operating in the food value chain that are closer to the consumer are more likely to initiate activities with the potential for upcycling.