Amazon Accelerate talks pave way for tech disrupter to unlock growth for food brands

Leaders of a Yorkshire-based regulatory tech disruptor have met with key contacts at Amazon’s premier partner event as part of a drive to help US companies crack international markets.

Rubicon Bridge Managing Director Kathryn Brown, Chief Revenue Officer Alan Worthing and Regulatory Transformation Director Daniel Hibbitt held a series of meetings at the ecommerce giant’s Amazon Accelerate conference in Seattle.

They now plan further talks leading to a number of high-profile US food and supplements brands trialing Rubicon Bridge’s game-changing technology to slice through the complex regulatory barriers that can prevent brands from taking their products into new countries.

Rubicon Bridge is based at the C4DI (Centre for Digital Innovation) tech hub in Hull, from where it has developed and commercialised technology that fast-tracks the process of food and food supplement brands breaking into new markets.

The business launched in 2023 as the sister company of Rubicon Technical, which has been providing consumer health brands with regulatory compliance support for more than 15 years.

Integration with Amazon has been key to Rubicon Bridge opening up an ever-growing number of European markets.

Now Rubicon Bridge is focused on taking its unique Reg Tech Tool™ to the States and used the meetings at Amazon Accelerate to promote the opportunity for US-based brands to embrace the technology to reach lucrative markets in Europe and beyond.

Rubicon Bridge founder and Managing Director Kathryn Brown said: “It was great to be at Amazon Accelerate. We had very encouraging discussions and it’s clear from the meetings we had in Seattle that there is growing recognition of the power of our unique technology to cut through the complexity of compliance and open up export markets.

“We’re rapidly opening up markets across Europe and see huge potential in helping US-based food brands to grow globally.

“We’re now looking to establish trials with leading US food and food supplement brands, to fast-track their access to new markets.”

Amazon Accelerate is the global technology and ecommerce giant’s premier annual selling partner conference, held in Amazon’s headquarters city. It featured more than 150 speakers, with around 4,000 people attending in person while a further 8,000 joined virtually.

Giving a keynote speech at the event, Rohan Oommen, Amazon’s Vice President, Worldwide Trustworthy Shopping Experience, acknowledged the growing challenge of regulatory compliance across global markets – the key issue that Rubicon Bridge’s technology addresses.

He said: “We understand the challenges posed by the ever-evolving landscape of product compliance requirements.

“In just the next three years, we anticipate the introduction of 120 new product and environmental regulations, and that’s in the EU alone.”

Rubicon Bridge’s Reg Tech Tool™ is already part of Amazon’s European Service Provider Network.

This means any food supplement company selling through Amazon in the EU can access the Reg Tech Tool™ and have confidence their products meet the regulatory requirements of a specific country.

The challenging nature of regulations in the food and food supplements industries means it often takes businesses months to check if a single product is compliant with regulatory requirements in a new nation. The Reg Tech Tool™ slashes that process to a matter of minutes.

The Reg Tech Tool™ enables a business to rapidly check that a product, a formulation or a single ingredient is compliant with regulations. It can then generate label text and digital assets in multiple languages.

Rubicon Bridge launched the Reg Tech Tool™ as a commercial product last year and it already unlocks ecommerce markets in nine European countries.

Rubicon Bridge is now focused on taking it to the US, with the Amazon Accelerate visit the first of two major opportunities to promote the technology to US-based brands.

Managing Director Kathryn Brown is part of a Women in Tech Trade Mission, run by the UK Department for Business & Trade, to New York, Philadelphia and New Jersey, this month.

The delegation is for a select group of UK tech companies focused on expansion to the US that are either female-founded or have women leaders.

Kathryn Brown added: “We’re excited about these opportunities to talk to business leaders and investors in the US about our technology and how it is truly transformational in opening up new markets around the world.

“The technology is proven and being used by food and supplements brands to reach profitable markets in a growing number of European countries. The next step is taking this technology to the US, which offers enormous potential.”

Rubicon Bridge is generating increasing profile for its transformational technology and as a high-growth investment opportunity.

Earlier this year it was listed among the 15 UK start-ups based outside London to watch, according to investors, by Sifted, the leading media brand for the European start-up community, which is backed by the Financial Times.