IPACK-IMA, a project involving 40 Italian companies and over 30 North African professionals, attracted keen interest and generated a total of 377 B2B (business-to-business) meetings with high levels of satisfaction on the part of both exhibitors and buyers.
Strengthening the show’s international appeal, consolidating relations with business communities and maintaining an increasingly strong focus on the processing and packaging supply chain in the food sector are the goals of on the road to IPACK-IMA, the series of initiatives organised to engage with exhibitors and visitors in the lead-up to IPACK-IMA 2021.
The second appointment in the programme, devoted to international buyers from the Maghreb region (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) and Egypt, was held in Milan earlier this month, with a packed programme of company visits and meetings.
The programme began in Palazzo delle Stelline, where the IPACK-IMA exhibitors met North African buyers selected in cooperation with the Italian Trade Agency (ITA).
It continued in the factories of several of the companies, who welcomed the guests and presented the details and functions of the cutting-edge technologies they will be exhibiting at the trade show, a foretaste of what will happen on a larger scale at IPACK-IMA itself.
Buyers from the food, fresh and convenience and liquid food and beverage categories visited Sacchital, a specialist in flexible packaging solutions with materials capable of extending shelf life; Goglio, a company focussed on flexible packaging of liquid, solid and powdered products and aseptic packaging of fresh food; and Smigroup, a leader in the packaging machine and bottling plant sector catering for production requirements of up to 36,800 bottles/hour, which organised a visit to Acqua Minerale Stella Alpina, where visitors had a unique opportunity to observe real production cycles with machinery in operation.
For the pasta, bakery and milling category, one of the core sectors of IPACK-IMA, the guests met Italpast, a company specialising in plant and machinery for the production of fresh, dry, gluten-free and high-protein pasta, and Ocrim, a historic producer of milling plants, feed mills and cereal processing plants, from raw materials handling through to transformation of the finished product.
North Africa is a dynamic and rapidly evolving market, especially in the food packaging sector. Egypt and Algeria in particular have excellent prospects with growth forecasts of +4.3 per cent and +5 per cent, respectively, for the three-year period 2019-2021 (according to the IPACK-IMA Monitor, based on UCIMA Research Department data).
The initiatives held in the lead-up to 2021 will consolidate the IPACK-IMA platform as a unique opportunity for meetings and discussions between professionals and managers from all over the world, not just during the show itself.
The On the road to IPACK-IMA and Meat-Tech programme, successfully launched with events devoted to Mexico and North Africa, will continue over the next few months with initiatives aimed at the Middle-East and Turkey in March 2020. These will be followed by Russia and Eastern Europe.