Students of the Hanze University of Applied Sciences and Wageningen University won the Avebe Student Challenge with their team Ave2be. They won a year’s tuition fees.
With the Student Challenge, Avebe invited the students to design the factory of the future in the context of Avebe’s centenary. Innovation and sustainability were central aspects. The team, consisting of Nicolas Curubeto, Sander Oosterveld and Connor Calnan, managed to convince the jury and the audience with their proposal Ave-To-be: The Plant of the Future, and charged ahead of the other four finalists.
The jury was highly impressed by the proposal of the winning team, which included suggestions for new products and processes. The integrated approach in particular stood out, and was even supported by experiments. “The team went to great lengths to arrive at this proposal for the Avebe factory of the future. It was an extremely comprehensive report, and every process step was considered in an integrated approach for the entire factory”, commented the jury. Team Novation from TU Delft finished in second place, whilst third place went to CT4 of the Hanze University of Applied Sciences.
The Avebe Student Challenge – design the factory of the future and win a year’s tuition fees
More than 60 students from the Netherlands responded to Avebe’s call to design the factory of the future. The Student Challenge involved an exciting task – what if you could build an Avebe factory from scratch? Which technologies would you use to obtain maximum value from the ingredients of a potato with minimum use of energy, water and chemicals? To prepare for the challenge, the students visited one of Avebe’s production sites in Ter Apelkanaal, which is the world’s largest potato-starch factory. Subsequently they worked on their proposals in teams. A total of eight proposals were submitted. An expert jury, chaired by Marcel Schuttelaar, founder of Schuttelaar & Partners, assessed the entries, and five were invited to pitch their proposal. During the grand final on the 7th of February, the audience also voted to select the winner. Each of the students from the winning team receives a year’s tuition fees.
