The perfect recipe
The Food Ingredients (Fi) events are all set to step inside the Indian arena with a conference programme this September. To find out more about it, Niranjan Mudholkar spoke to Eliane van Doorn, Group Exhibitions Director, Food Ingredients Portfolio, CMP Information
Tell us something about the history of the Food Ingredients events. How is it different from the other events in the industry?
The Food Ingredients (Fi) Event started in Europe in 1986 as a very tiny conference in Holland and I think we had one or two table talks and an exhibition. That has grown out into an event of 25,000 sq m net, over a thousand exhibitors and about 15,000 visitors. From Fi Europe we also created Health Ingredients Europe, a bi-annual event. Its first event was in 2000. Now in 2006 we will have its fourth edition in Frankfurt, Germany (November 14–16, 2006). We have over 500 companies exhibiting there.
There are so many finished-food-products exhibitions. But ingredients B2B were not covered by them. What I feel is that Fi has created a niche by catering to this segment. From Fi we created another niche with the Hi event in 2000 and next year we will have the Natural Ingredients (Ni) event in Brussels, Belgium (April 3–5, 2007). Basically, the success of the Natural Ingredients Pavilion at the Fi events was the inspiration to create Ni as a show in its own right. This event will not only be for the food industry but also for the medical remedies and recipes industries and for the cosmetics industry as a lot of natural ingredients are used across these industries.
How did the Fi events turn towards China and the rest of Asia?
When we organised the Fi events in Europe, we realised that there is a big emerging market for this industry outside Europe as well. So we started our event in Asia. Then we had alternating events in China and in the other parts of Asia. With the rise in demand we decided to have one event in Asia and one event in China. The Chinese event is an annual event in Shanghai that occurs every year in March. It will attract something like 100 international companies and 500 Chinese companies. Just before our conference in India on September 19, 2006, we are going to Bangkok, Thailand, this year. It’s the third time we are going to Bangkok. Thailand has a big backyard for food ingredients. Of course, it is not as big as India but it is important. In the first year in Bangkok, we had a lot of Thai companies with some very small stands. Now we see some new small stands in Thailand. But all those who exhibited earlier are coming up with bigger and better stands.
We are also having a small event in Eastern Europe. I am not sure whether you are aware of it but the European community has grown and more countries are now belonging to the European Union (EU). So we try to accommodate that as a lot of big European companies are looking at manufacturing opportunities in Eastern Europe. Also, Eastern Europeans are earning more money nowadays and they are becoming more aware.
