TradeScope's Ted Horton visited the Food Matters Live trade show on November 20. Last year, we reported that the exhibition was suffering from a lack of focus and declining numbers. Did they get it right this year? Here's Ted's view.
Unfortunately, for the second year running, the number of exhibitors dropped significantly. From an exhibitor's perspective, the Food Matters Live has become a food and beverage ingredients trade show. Many larger ingredient companies exhibited in 2019, but there was a distinct absence of other types of producers that exhibited in previous years, such as university nutrition and food technology programmes, food wholesalers, trade associations, food research organisations and certification companies.
On the plus side, the seminars continue to be its strong point. They had a broad range of seminars and presentations on offer including sustainability, packaging, nutrition and entrepreneurship. I attended a seminar about sustainable packaging and it was excellent. They secured the operations director of Gousto to tell us about their efforts to reduce plastic packaging as well as some of the challenges they had faced.
It would be a shame to see this show falter, but Food Matters Live is a show which needs to adapt, concentrating on its strengths. I fear it might falter on recruiting exhibitors. But I hope it survives as a forum for important food issues. If you'd like to learn more, please get in touch with Ted.