The problem
Every year more than 59 million tonnes of food are wasted in the EU, about 132 kg per person, and more than half of it comes from households, according to Eurostat figures cited by EIT Food. The market value of that food is estimated at €132 billion a year (EIT Food).
Expiry dates are part of the problem. Producers set use-by and best-before dates assuming poor storage, such as a warm fridge or a long trip home, because they cannot know how a product will be handled. Food kept properly often stays good for days longer, but consumers follow the date and throw it away. Dates also tell blind and partially sighted people nothing unless they can read the print, which is where the idea for Bump began.
The product
Solveiga Pakštaitė designed the first version, Bump Mark, as a student. In September 2014 it won the UK national stage of the James Dyson Award: a gelatine-based label that changes texture as food decays, so people can feel freshness without opening the pack (The Guardian). It was designed to help people with visual impairments access expiry information through touch.
Mimica turned the concept into a business, starting in 2017 with juice as its proof of concept under EIT Food’s RisingFoodStars programme. Design Week profiled the product in January 2021 under the name Mimica Touch (Design Week). Today it is sold as Bump in two formats:
- Bump Tag: a label for packaged fresh foods such as meat and fish.
- Bump Cap: a cap that fits onto bottles of juice, smoothies and other drinks.
Mimica stresses that Bump does not replace dates. It lets brands print a longer date based on reasonable storage, while warning if poor storage has shortened that time. Consumers follow whichever comes first: the date or the bumps.
How it works
Inside each Bump is a temperature-sensitive gel calibrated to a specific food. The gel degrades at the same rate as that food spoils, speeding up when it is warm and slowing down when it is cold. While the food is fresh, the gel sits smooth over a bumpy surface. When the food reaches the end of its real life, the gel liquefies and reveals the bumps underneath, which can be felt with a fingertip and also seen.
Because the reaction tracks cumulative temperature exposure, a pack kept in a cold fridge lasts longer than one left on a warm counter, which a printed date cannot capture. Each label has to be tuned to the spoilage profile of the product it protects, which is why trials are run food by food.
Timeline
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 18 September 2014 | Bump Mark wins the UK leg of the James Dyson Award |
| 2017 | Mimica starts commercial development with juice, supported by EIT Food |
| January 2021 | Design Week profiles the product as Mimica Touch |
| January 2025 | Mimica takes the keys to its Wrexham factory and brings production in-house |
| 28 May 2025 | Results published from a 100-household steak trial with ABP UK and Sheffield Hallam University |
| October 2025 | Crowdfunding and wider round raise around £300,000 at a £15 million pre-money valuation |
| 2026 | Mimica receives Flintshire and Wrexham Investment Zone funding to scale its Wrexham site |
Impact and numbers
- Juice trial: in an EIT Food-backed consumer trial on orange juice, Bump Caps helped 97% of households enjoy their juice for up to six days beyond the expiry date guidance.
- Steak trial: 100 households received two ABP steaks, one with a standard use-by date and one with a Bump Tag and a date four days later. Confidence in freshness was 97.8% for the Bump steak and 97.6% for the control; 97% found the instructions easy, 85% wanted Bump Tags on steak packs, and 72% said they would help reduce food waste (Mimica).
- Shelf life: Mimica says it extended the shelf life of ABP products by 21% and helped health drinks brand EXALT extend its dates by 25%.
- Carbon modelling: an impact study cited by EIT Food found that the UK buys about 1 billion kg of juice a year and wastes 121 million kg. Bump Caps only need to cut juice waste by 4.9% to offset their own footprint, and wide adoption could save up to 106 million kg of CO2e a year. For UK beef, at 46.2 kg CO2e per kg, a 0.3% waste reduction would be enough to break even.
- Demand: Mimica reported a waiting list of more than 300 potential customers in 2025 (The Grocer).
Honest caveats. Bump is still at an early commercial stage. Most published results are trials and models rather than national rollouts, and the carbon savings depend on adoption at scale. Supermarkets and regulators will need to be satisfied about food safety for each product category before longer dates become routine, and the label itself adds a small amount of material to each pack.
What’s next
Mimica’s priority is industrial scale. Its Wrexham line was semi-automated in 2025, which limited volumes, and the 2025 fundraise was aimed at full automation so it can fulfil larger contracts from 2026. A project with ABP, funded through EIT Food, was set up to bring Bump Tags to supermarket own-brand meat in the UK and EU. Policy is moving its way: the revised EU Waste Framework Directive, in force since 16 October 2025, requires a 30% per-capita cut in food waste across retail, food services and households by 2030 against a 2021 to 2023 baseline (European Commission). Since households produce the largest share, tools that change behaviour at home will be in demand.
Why it matters for Europe / green buyers
Bump attacks food waste at the top of the waste hierarchy: prevention. Rather than recycling spoiled food, it keeps good food from being binned in the first place, and it does so with an inclusive design that works for people who cannot read a printed date.
For retailers and food brands, the case combines sustainability with sales: longer dates mean fewer markdowns and more time for customers to use what they buy. When assessing it, ask for product-specific validation data, how the label is calibrated, what happens if packs are stored badly, and the label’s own footprint. For policy makers working on date-marking rules, Bump is a working example of a dynamic alternative to static dates.
Sources & image credits
- EIT Food, “Mimica: unlocking the true shelf life of food with Bump”, 21 May 2025: https://www.eitfood.eu/impact-stories/mimica-unlocking-the-true-shelf-life-of-food-with-bump
- Mimica, “Household steak trial results: Bump Tag boosts trust in freshness”, 28 May 2025: https://www.mimicalab.com/blog/household-steak-trial-results-bump-tag-boosts-trust-in-freshness
- The Grocer, “Waste-saving ‘bumpy’ expiry labels company beats crowdfunding target”, 1 October 2025: https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/news/waste-saving-bumpy-expiry-labels-company-beats-crowdfunding-target/710061.article
- The Leader (Wrexham), “Mimica raises £300,000+ to ramp up Wrexham production”, 2025: https://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/25520619.mimica-raises-300-000-ramp-wrexham-production/
- The Guardian, “Bioreactive bump that could replace sell-by dates wins James Dyson award”, 18 September 2014: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/18/bioreactive-bump-gelatine-food-sell-by-date-wins-james-dyson-award
- Design Week, “Could a smarter expiration label combat the food waste crisis?”, January 2021: https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/11-17-january-2021/mimica-touch/
- Mimica website (accessed 6 October 2026): https://www.mimicalab.com/
- Mimica on LinkedIn, Flintshire and Wrexham Investment Zone funding, 2026: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mimica_investmentzone-wrexham-ukmanufacturing-activity-7478004975688679424--Spy
- European Commission, “Revised Waste Framework Directive enters into force”, 16 October 2025: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/revised-waste-framework-directive-enters-force-2025-10-16_en
Images:
- “Edible food from a food retailer’s container” by PizzaToast, CC0 1.0 public domain dedication (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edible_food_from_a_food_retailer%27s_container.jpg
