Nearly 6,500 attendees and 3,000 exhibitor personnel participated in the inaugural ProFood Tech trade show in April. Held at McCormick Place in Chicago, the show featured cutting-edge technologies and innovative solutions within the food and beverage industry.
The International Dairy Foods Association was one of three partners involved in staging the exhibition. The others were PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, based in Virginia, and Koelnmesse, an organizer of international trade fairs (including Anuga) based in Germany.
ProFood Tech was a three-day event featuring 447 processing suppliers in 144,000 net square feet of exhibit floor space. There were 45 hours of educational programming.
The show producers said they created ProFood Tech to fill a void in the marketplace.
“ProFood Tech reaffirmed our belief that North America needed a comprehensive processing event,” said Charles D. Yuska, president and CEO of PMMI.
The ProFood Tech conference program, presented by IDFA, was the largest in North America dedicated to food and beverage processing. The program offered insights into the best practices in processing and engineering, innovations and new ingredients, regulations and food safety, consumer trends and marketing, flavor trends, business and leadership development and health and lifestyle.
IDFA President and CEO Michael Dykes said, “Overall, ProFood Tech demonstrated the countless growth opportunities that exist for companies willing to employ new technology and techniques to boost production, efficiency and profits. Attendees now have new supplier contacts, inventive ideas and powerful business solutions they can use to meet their needs and goals.”
ProFood Tech returns to Chicago March 26 to 28, 2019. It will be on a biennial schedule in odd-numbered years.
— Contributed by the International Dairy Foods Association
