Technological innovation, key to facing the challenges of the food industry

Technological advances and digitalization are revolutionizing, by leaps and bounds, various industrial and production sectors, facilitating the transition towards increasingly innovative, efficient and sustainable models.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
13 April 2024 Saturday 17:02
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Technological innovation, key to facing the challenges of the food industry

Technological advances and digitalization are revolutionizing, by leaps and bounds, various industrial and production sectors, facilitating the transition towards increasingly innovative, efficient and sustainable models. The food sector is, without a doubt, one of the most benefited by this endless number of new possibilities. This is how we can see it at Food 4 Future – Expo Foodtech 2024, a prestigious meeting that will bring together the most relevant and prominent firms from the entire value chain of the food industry, at the Bilbao Exhibition Center from April 16 to 18, to present the latest technological innovations that are already transforming the forms of production in multiple segments of this sector.

During these days, more than 8,000 professionals will have the opportunity to discover the latest solutions, strategies and success stories that are helping to transform food industry production plants into more decarbonized, technological and digital factories. More than 280 leading foodtech companies will be in charge of showing their proposals in robotics and automation, processing and packaging machinery, logistics and cold chain, sustainability, or food science and safety.

Likewise, Food 4 Future will once again host the long-awaited Food 4 Future Word Summit. In it, more than 450 experts from renowned companies such as Danone, Campofrío, Mahou San Miguel, Pascual, Nestlé, Estrella Galicia, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners Iberia, Sanygram, Nauterra, Vichy Catalán or Eroski will fully respond to the great challenges of the sector. , from the impact of the demographic challenge to the climate crisis and the complex geopolitical scenarios that we are facing. Among other issues, the meeting will address important topics such as sustainability, biotechnology, carbon economics in processes, or supply chain opportunities; At the same time, the latest trends, products and specific solutions for each segment of the industry will be presented: agritech, meat, beverages, bakery and pastry, fishing, dairy, cereals, preserves, oils, etc.

Forums already consolidated in previous editions will also return, such as the CIO's Summit, in which Innovation and Information Technology managers will be able to discover the latest processes of penetration of new markets or the most innovative research strategies; the EIT Food Innovation Forum, annual innovation forum organized by EIT Food (European Institute of Innovation and Technology); or the Plant Managers Summit, specially designed for all plant and production managers in the food industry.

The European Foodtech Nations, for its part, will serve to put on the table the possibilities of the main innovation ecosystems of the European and international food industry. It will be a magnificent opportunity to give visibility to all the initiatives that are being carried out in places as different as the Netherlands or Japan (the latter country, after its successful experience last year, will return to present its latest and long-awaited developments to professionals from the entire sector). The United Kingdom, the guest country of this fourth edition, will have a delegation of entrepreneurs who will attend Food 4 Future with the help of the Spanish Institute of Foreign Trade (ICEX), to present the country's current ecosystem in terms of foodtech innovation.

Food 4 Future arrives at a particularly relevant time for the sector, in which – as its recently appointed president, also CEO of Campofrío, Javier Dueñas, points out – the food industry faces great challenges, such as the increase in the world population (and, consequently, of the demand for food), or the importance of redefining procedures to cause a positive impact on the environment. For Dueñas, “responding to these challenges is essential and requires the development of a global food geostrategy and a technological revolution that involves the digitalization of the entire value chain, from the farm to the consumer's table.”

As a notable novelty, on this occasion Food 4 Future will be held simultaneously with Pick

Thanks to Pick

Within the framework of the Pick

The second, the European Logistics Summit 2024, will present the latest proposals, trends and success stories to take logistics systems to a new level of productivity. Among the thematic axes of this event, we will find the challenges of the new Smart Logistics and the professional profiles in this specific field, reverse logistics, improvements in automation and digitalization, the Internet of Things (IoT) applied to the sector, Cross-Docking applications (the type of order preparation in which the merchandise is distributed directly to the customer without having to go through a prior storage period), the new Supply Chain or cold logistics.