2023-10-06 18:05:51
Bastian Mingers describes Koelnmesse as the “largest supermarket in the world” for the next five days. He is responsible for Anuga, the world’s largest food trade fair, which brings together food manufacturers, sellers and buyers from Saturday. Whether chili sauces made from mushrooms, fruit juices made from fermented cucumber juice, beer made from leftover tortilla production, plant-based shrimp patties or yogurt made from apricot kernels – around 7,800 exhibitors from 118 countries are trying to make their new products tasty.
“Completely fully booked”
Of course, only a small proportion of them end up on the shelves and experience shows that only about a third of them end up in consumers’ shopping baskets in the long term, but such leading trade fairs are particularly important for new developments. “Anuga is absolutely at the record level of 2019,” says Oliver Frese, the Koelnmesse board member responsible for operational trade fair business. 94 percent of the exhibitors come from abroad, and the Koelnmesse is expecting more than 130,000 trade visitors, also predominantly international. “We have rented out every last square centimeter of the exhibition center,” says Frese. Globally there is a lot of catching up to do, and there are also many products that will probably never be available for purchase in Germany or Europe – for regulatory reasons alone.
It is precisely against this background that the German food industry is ambivalent about its situation. After all, Anuga is a trade fair for specialist audiences, so food manufacturers reach consumers primarily through advertising. And Federal Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir (Greens)’s plans to restrict advertising for certain products are worrying the industry. “We simply don’t know what effect the planned advertising ban would have,” says Christoph Minhoff, managing director of the Federal Association of the German Food Industry (BVE). In its current form, the plan from the Ministry of Agriculture would affect 80 percent of the products, Minhoff calculates. This would also have an impact on which new products would actually be manufactured in this country.
Recipe from the state?
Almost 6,000 companies in the German food industry generate annual sales of 218.5 billion euros; the industry is almost exclusively characterized by small and medium-sized businesses. When Özdemir comes to the Anuga opening on Saturday, there will be more to talk about. The minister, together with the Max Rubner Institute, the Federal Research Institute for Nutrition and Food, presented “scientific product monitoring” to encourage manufacturers to use less fat, salt and sugar in their products. The industry itself argues that it has been working on changing recipes for years. “We cannot understand the idea that the state thinks that it is better than the manufacturers at creating recipes,” says Minhoff.
Decrease in new products
Trade fairs like Anuga showed that there are ideas not only for short-term trends, but also for long-term developments for more health-conscious foods, meat alternatives or so-called “clean label” products that show what ingredients are not currently being used. “It surprises us all the more that politicians are also developing the idea of wanting to influence the work of innovation,” says Minhoff.
Felicitas Witte Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 11 Published/Updated: Recommendations: 12 Martin Hock Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 7
Due to the regulation, a decline in new launches has already been observed in Germany. Over four years, it was 2.5 percent annually in this country, as a BVE survey showed, while worldwide there was an annual increase of 4.3 percent. However, innovations are drivers of employment and therefore also location factors for the German food market, warns the BVE.
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