Gulfood Manufacturing, the largest food and beverage processing and packaging show in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, will lift the lid on the reinvention of food production when it returns for its sixth edition from 29-31 October at Dubai World Trade Centre, as manufacturers race to improve efficiency and pricing while complying with increasing regulation.

Growing food safety, waste concerns and a desire to get produce to market faster and more affordable are now driving innovation, as well as impacting the equipment producers choose in a fiercely competitive F&B market. Gulfood Manufacturing 2019 will address these and other industry issues with the latest in processing technology on show across 81,000 square meters of exhibition space.

Tailored networking opportunities afforded at the mega event will also shape the industry’s future, with sector-wide collaboration crucial to meeting the challenges, according to Swiss flavors manufacturing powerhouse Givaudan. The firm is making its Gulfood Manufacturing debut this year, aiming to use the platform to seek out partners to “co-create and innovate”.

Antonoine Khalil, Givaudan’s Commercial Head for Africa and the Middle East, believes current industry challenges “cannot be solved in isolation,” adding, “Some of the challenges we’re seeing include changing consumer attitudes towards ingredients, origin, labeling, authenticity, sustainability, health and wellness. Consumer attitudes have significantly evolved in recent years, not only in mature markets, and we need to respond with speed, efficiency and new solutions.

Khalil went on to explain that, “Affordability in developing markets where consumers are becoming more conscious about how to spend their money is also another key issue. We are stepping up our collaborative efforts to tackle these challenges as part of a global innovation ecosystem, while leveraging our market-leading knowledge and expertise for scalability to drive the necessary speed, efficiency and new solutions.”

Key food innovators on display

Another Gulfood Manufacturing debutant from Switzerland, Firmenich, the world’s largest privately-owned fragrance and flavor company, will be demonstrating its innovations for fat and salt reduction, MSG replacers, taste enhancers and alternative ‘green’ protein solutions amid the trend for sugar reduction and going ‘natural’, which is driving technological innovation.

“In tackling today’s malnutrition crisis, our latest technology TastePRINT can reduce up to 100 percent of added sugar naturally while keeping an equal taste experience. This year alone with our taste modulation technologies we removed 215 metric tonnes of sugar from products that consumers love, taking 870 billion calories out of their diets,” said Thoger Larsen, VP Flavors IMA, Firmenich. The company’s sugar reduction expertise will be leveraged at the second Gulfood Manufacturing FoodTech Summit when the company’s VP of Taste, Imad Farhat, will discuss the latest developments.

“The second edition of this eagerly anticipated and crucial Summit will take the industry into the future with the introduction of next-gen technologies including blockchain, AI and robotics, which are transforming F&B manufacturing facilities into smart factories,” explained Trixie LohMirmand, Senior Vice President, Exhibitions and Events, DWTC. “With food security an ever more pressing growing concern, the Summit program will address how we can make food safe for the future and to what extent the industry can innovate and create alternative food supply and resources.”

Sharing the FoodTech Summit platform will be Sudarsan Thattai, the CIO of Lineage, who will explore emerging cold chain technologies. Ignacio Ramirez Rico, Managing Director of Winnow MENA, will address waste reduction through a case study of the Emaar Hospitality Group, the first company to mobilize cutting-edge AI technology into its UAE kitchens.

The Summit is among a range of Gulfood Manufacturing features, which have cemented the show as a forecasting, trend tracking and sector education platform. Four features – a Big Buyers Program, which hosts up to 2,000 pre-selected buyers; Innovation Tours, which provide deep insights into artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain and robotics; Gulfood Manufacturing Industry Excellence Awards, designed to inspire, and a probing business talk conference will put the show at the forefront of F&B transformation.

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