With a good taste in our mouths

On 26 March Barcelona’s Alimentaria, one of the world’s three biggest food and catering trade fairs closed its gates. The fair is held every second year and is now held at Fira de Barcelona’s Gran Via, which is not simply a modern expo space but lso the 21st-century way of receiving visitors, e.g. moving sidewalks connect pavilions with each other. On 100,000 m² nearly 4,000 exhibitors awaited more than 40,000 visitors during the 5 days. There were 36,000 foreign visitors from 150 countries, which is a really high number. This result probably has to do with the fact that Spain sees the way out of the crisis through the globalisation of retail. Organising company Fira de Barcelona launched a successful promotion campaign in Spain and all over the world, cooperating with local authorities and associations. During the 5 days of the exhibition they also organised meetings for businessmen where participants could establish cross-border business relations or international R+D projects. There were 8,000 bilateral and several multilateral business negotiations conducted at these meetings and other trade programmes only.

Fira de Barcelona’s director, Josep Lluís Bonet thinks the event’s success was the result of two years of preparatory work. The trade fair focused on promoting brands nd brand building, while organisers did not forget about strategic fields either – they divided food industry into different sectors and positioned Alimentaria 2010 as the collective trade fair of these sectors. Alimentaria’s biggest attraction was 25,000-m² Intervin, where the best wines, sparkling wines and other grape products were presented at spectacular stands. At the BCNVanguardia gastronomy conference world-famous Spanish chefs showed how colours should be used in the kitchen. Unfortunately, Hungarian presence at Alimentaria was much more moderate than two years ago. Back then AMC organised the participation of 15 companies. This time Hungary was not present in the International Pavilion. We came across two Hungarian stands in thematic pavilions: Hungerit was introducing its packaging solutions on 18 m², while Pickinfo Kft. was present with a 9-m² stand – both companies reported of several possible new business contacts.