The exhibition reunites its offerings, taking place entirely within Fira de Barcelona’s Gran Vía venue

Alimentaria 2010 is set to be an exceptional international business centre and platform for brands

Alimentaria, the International Food and Beverages Exhibition, is once again preparing to make Barcelona the world’s food and beverage capital. The event will be held 22-26 March 2010 in a single location: Fira de Barcelona’s Gran Vía venue. At the next edition, its eighteenth, Alimentaria will once again earn its place as the sector’s most important Spanish trade show, one of the most crucial at the international level, and a true declaration of support for brands and their attributes.

One of the newest features is that the entire Alimentaria event will be held at Fira de Barcelona’s Gran Vía venue. Alimentaria 2010 will concentrate all of its offerings and activities in the venue’s pavilions, a response to ‘repeated requests from exhibitors and visitors and taking a realistic approach to the current economic situation,’ explains J. Antonio Valls, exhibition director and deputy managing director of the organiser, Alimentaria Exhibitions.

The main aim of concentrating the exhibition in a single site is to ‘maintain and even increase’ the number of participating companies, forcing them to reflect on their participation, adapting their needs to the current economic situation.

As a result, the new location will have ‘the same area and will encourage’ the participation of companies by offering them the option of attending with smaller stands. This will undoubtedly result in ‘lower costs’ for exhibitors, states Valls. According to forecasts from the organisers, close to 5,000 companies will occupy around 94,500 m2 of exhibition space, with an additional area dedicated to the many activities which provide the show’s leisure and educational counterpoint.

The fact is that Alimentaria is a true international centre for business operations, with more than 20% of the 158,000 show’s visitors coming from abroad. The level of internationalisation increases to 30% in the case of exhibitor companies, more than 1,500 firms. In total, 15,000 m2 of the 94,500 m2 of net area occupied by Alimentaria 2010 will be reserved for exhibitors from other countries, 2% more than at the trade show’s last edition in 2008.

Internationalisation as a way out of the crisis

Looking abroad is essential in order to counteract the effects of the economic crisis and provide a secure position for the Spanish agri-food activity, which has a mature, consolidated domestic market. Alimentaria 2010 aspires to establish itself as a vehicle for internationalisation for the Spanish food and beverage industry and to this effect is carrying out an ambitious and effective foreign promotion campaign. A delegation from the exhibition is taking an active role in the FIAB’s (Spanish acronym for the Spanish Food and Drink Industry Federation) International Promotion Conference, which has already made stops in Ireland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Dubai, with upcoming events planned in Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Peru.

Asia continues to be the preferred market of Spanish food and beverage companies for expansion. Alimentaria has therefore also actively promoted itself at China Food & Hotel in Shanghai and Foodex in Tokyo. One result of this is the agreement with the Japan Wine & Spirits Importers Association to promote Intervin, Alimentaria’s wine and spirits show, among distributors and importers in that country.

The festival of brands

Together with internationalisation, the show’s organisers are focusing especially on strengthening other strategic values such as innovation and division into sectors – with the event’s 15 different shows all co-existing. However, the leitmotif for the next edition will be the promotion of manufacturers’ brands in an environment which makes this more necessary than ever. Alimentaria 2010 will show that brands are synonymous with safety, confidence, innovation, progress, development, quality, business and creating jobs, among other vitally important attributes. ‘At Alimentaria the industry will have the opportunity to explain why its products are different and demonstrate their values,’ indicates Valls, for whom companies ‘must seek their competitive advantage through innovation’.

Innoval 2010

In this regard, the seventh edition of Innoval will reinforce the show’s commitment to R&D&I and will set itself up as the place where brands and innovation come together. Conceived as a cluster of new ideas, Innoval will present hundreds of innovations to exhibitors, buyers, opinion leaders and the media. Some of these will be at the pre-launch stage, for Alimentaria’s innovation show is a true barometer for the international agri-food industry.

More than 62,000 buyers visited the last edition of Innoval, which will be located in Pavilion 3 for Alimentaria 2010. The show will recreate every aspect of the shopping experience through specific areas. In order to highlight the role of brands as true engines for building awareness, Innoval will also present the first-person testimony of innovation managers at firms which are leaders in this area.

More added value

The 8th International Food Forum will be held as part of Innoval 2010. The event will feature the presentation of the study prepared by the company Synovate: ‘The Spanish consumer and the socio-economic environment: the new role of food and beverage brands’.

Educational and leisure options will fill every corner of Alimentaria 2010. New features linked to emerging sectors such as agro-tourism and classic options such as BCNVanguardia, the Barcelona International Gastronomy Conference; Vinorum and the International Conference on the Mediterranean Diet will once again be a focal point for the sector.

Food and beverages are expanding at the height of the crisis

Alimentaria enjoys the privilege of representing an industry which continues to grow at the height of the crisis. The main economic figures for 2008 put the food and beverage industry at the forefront of Spanish industry as a whole, with 17% of industrial GDP and 7% of Spain’s GDP. 2008 net sales for the sector totalled 83,204 million euros. The figures for 2008 were positive not only in terms of production, but also for jobs and foreign trade. The sector’s coverage rate increased an energetic 5.13 points over 2008, exceeding the rate for the Spanish economy by 35 points.

And so the Spanish food and beverage industry continues to show its strength as the country’s leading industrial sector, positioning itself as a motor for change in the Spanish economy. The figures were positive not only in terms of production, but also for jobs. The average number of people employed by the sector last year was 502,150, indicating that the sector did not lose jobs, but rather created them, 2.99% more than the previous year, to be specific. These figures are from the 2008 Economic Report by the Spanish Food and Drink Industry Federation (FIAB in its Spanish acronym).