Alimentaria 2018, a key international event for food and beverage professionals, kicked off Monday at the Gran Via Venue in Barcelona.
The event, which runs in tandem with trade fair Hostelco, is run by trade organisation Fira de Barcelona and runs until the 19 April. It debuts only a few weeks prior to packaging fair Hispack and food production event Foodtech Barcelona, held in the same location. The exhibition space will take up 100,000 metres square.
Fira de Barcelona is one of the largest trade fair organisations in the Spanish market. It hosts more than 140 showrooms, conventions and corporate events annually. Attendees include representatives from 30,000 companies, and number over two million from all over the world.
Networking Opportunity
The pair of four-day events will bring in 150,000 visitors and 4,500 companies. Professionals from the commercial, production, distribution and R&D areas will attend this important networking event. More than one-quarter of participating individuals will come from abroad.
There are six showrooms featured at the event: Intercarn and Restaurama, for the wine, meat and Food Service sectors respectively; Expoconser (food preserves and semi-preserves); Interlact (dairy products and derivatives), and Multiple Foods (focusing on large consumption, new categories of products, among others). Hostelco will exhibit the latest developments in hotel machinery and equipment, technology, coffee, textiles, and interior design, among other sectors.
The director of Fira de Barcelona, Salvador Tasqué, said that, "With these four major events, Fira becomes a strategic partner for relevant sectors of the Catalan and Spanish economy, such as food, equipment for the hotel and restaurant industry, packaging, and food production process technologies by generating initiatives, spaces and opportunities to boost growth, business, the internationalisation of companies and networking.
Tasqué added that with "the joint celebration of [events] such as Alimentaria, Hostelco, Hispack and Foodtech Barcelona generates synergies that increase the value of each event separately and turns the fairground into a reference platform for the entire food product ecosystem."
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