A year of records?

For us, but also for the world around us. For some time now we have been reading about record food inflation, record volume declines in retail sales, record subsidies coming into the sector, record mergers, record labour shortages in many places and with this record staff turnover, record numbers and levels of extra burdens (let’s just call them taxes) that have appeared recently (and we have yet to see everything that is coming from January), record numbers and levels of wage increases – and I am really just giving you a few examples from the economic side of the FMCG market.

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2023/11.

We closed the Business Days conference a month ago. We exceeded the magic number of 1,000 participants and if the hotel walls had been made of rubber, we could have reached 1,100, and we wouldn’t have had to turn down registrations in the last few days! This is a record, too, and if I look beyond quantity, this year is absolutely top in terms of quality. There was almost no retail chain or major company from the food industry missing from the conference. The number of supporters who attended the conference and put their trust in us and in this year was also unparalleled.

Instead of the usual 14-16 entries for the POPAI POP Award competition, which is a side event of the Business Days, this year 34 entries were presented and each and every one of them was fantastic.

Although in hindsight the last week in September wasn’t easy at all, we had been looking forward to it! This year we chose a nautical theme, symbolising the state of the FMCG market with the Trade Fleet: in uncertain weather conditions, in uncertain waters, for 5 days we were searching for safe land…

Thank you to everyone who was there with us, and to those who thought of us from a distance and kept their fingers crossed that everything went as smoothly as possible, that everyone had a good time and found their precious time with us useful.

Of course, there is no shortage of reports, and in this issue of the magazine we start with looking back at the first three days, to give an insight for those colleagues who were unable to attend.

I wish you a good read for the Business Days report and all the other excellent articles, which also include several record reports!

Best regards,

Zsuzsanna Hermann, Editor in Chief