When the food world comes to Cologne

Author: John Giles Divisional Director, Promar International & President of the FDA of the CIM Group

A post card from ANUGA trade show
Sustainability, global niche markets and BREXIT on peoples lips...

Every other year, the Cologne Messe plays host to the ANUGA food trade fair. This is reported to be the biggest of its type in the world. Interesting to note that Germany has 20 of these facilities around the country – in the UK, we have just two! It all adds sense to Germany being a real power house in terms of international trade and commerce.

Some 150,000 trade visitors descend on Cologne over 5 days with food and drink companies from every corner of the globe looking for those all important new customers and sealing deals with existing ones.  Exhibitors are based in 12 halls the size of air craft hangars and divided by category - dairy, meat, chilled foods, frozen etc. This year, there seemed to be added attention to global growth categories such as halal, organic, “free from”, wine etc.

The other thing that struck me was the sheer attention being given to the issue of sustainability – however this is expressed.  Everybody seemed to be claiming “they were the most sustainable” (source of supply). Food and drink companies around the world have largely mastered the art of moving products both long and short distances to end up with customers in the right place at the right time, with the right packaging and price points – the good old 4 P’s of marketing from any decent text book on the subject.  

To this, a key future differentiator will now be who has the best/most sustainability credentials and the most resilient/progressive supply chains. This might include how the raw materials are actually farmed and produced in the first place, what sort of packaging is used, how products are moved around the world, how farm and factory labour is dealt with, how scarce resources such as water and energy are used in the supply chain or how waste is avoided within it. Some businesses clearly have this at the core of their operations and others seem to be just starting on the journey.

Yet, they can’t all be “the most sustainable” surely ? How this is measured and recorded in the first place seems to be a key issue. Claiming to be “sustainable” is one thing – proving it to a wide range of stakeholders is another thing altogether. Transparency and independence of systems used to do this seems to be at the heart of all this. This is an issue for the mid to long term.  It will not go away.

Who is interested in it  - everyone ! Europeans, the Americas, ! Africans, Asians and those in other parts of the world too.  Which parts of the supply chain need to pay attention to it  - all of it.  This applies to primary producers, processors, retailers, importers, exporters, foodservice companies, governments and yes, even consumers. If ever there was a need for a joined up approach to a complex subject, this is surely it. The Promar sustainability team is increasingly active in this area for a wide range of clients from across the supply chain  -  from SME start ups to large multi nationals.

And it was good to see too amongst the other European countries, Americans, Latinos, Chinese, Japanese and just about any other country you could name, a healthy turn out of UK companies, including Welsh, Scottish, English and Irish. The dairy sector seemed to have special prominence, with a range of our best cheese companies there, in particular, as well as a host of others – biscuits, juices, cereals, flavoured teas, confectionery, seafood,  meat, soft drinks and the like all well to the fore.

As well as the normal trade show chit chat, the subject of Brexit never seemed to be too far away from the conversation. When the ANUGA show is next held in Cologne, the UK will have left the EU (or will we – there seems to a view held by some, that this might never happen and certainly not in the next 18 months), but it is certainly a subject that provokes a lot of conversation. At Promar, we have just completed our third “proper” Brexit study. We would expect/hope to do a few more over the next 18 months too and even beyond.

There is so much else happening however in the international agri food supply chain round the world. There is a danger in the UK, that we take the collective eye of the ball as to this and get wrapped up in Brexit, while the rest of the world seems to charge on regardless.

ANUGA? A massive event. Truly global. Forget the 5.30 start at Stansted on a Saturday morning (ouch !). Forget the fact you need a new pair of feet when you get back home ! If you want to be active in the international agri good sector, this really is a “must attend” event.  And another tip  - try a hotel in Bergheim -  30 minutes on a direct train to the Messe and forget those £500/600/700 a night places in  Cologne and Dusseldorf! I am all for the law of supply and demand, but that’s just daft.

ANUGA is held in Cologne every other year – next year, it will be SIAL in Paris. Another massive, similar event. As they say at the end of the Olympics, I bid you to reconvene........but now on with the job of following up all those leads and contacts made ! Auf Wiedersehen Cologne, bon jour Paris!