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WTCE ’17 commences in Mumbai; Spotlight on opportunities in innovation
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Friday, 17 November, 2017, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Anurag More, Mumbai
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Opportunities in innovation and entrepreneurship development in the food and tea/coffee sectors was the first topic of the conference at the World Tea and Coffee Expo (WTCE) 2017, the fifth essay of the event dedicated to the two beverages, which commenced at the Bombay Convention and Exhibition Centre.
The three-day event, organised by Sentinel Exhibitions Asia Pvt Ltd, was inaugurated by Saroja Sirisenan, consul general, consulate general of Sri Lanka, and Saud Salim Al Mazrouei, director, Sharjah Airport International Free Zone (SAIF Zone), Government of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
Al Mazrouei said, “We are happy to be here at the event this year, and this is a great platform for companies to showcase their products. We also want companies to come to our country and set up business and we will help them. And I would like to come for the event again next year.”
Jayanta Roy, founder and chief executive officer, JRMC Global, was the first speaker at the conference. He said, “Feeding the global population has emerged as a critical issue. There are great investment opportunities in the Indian food industry.” He added that education, innovation and entrepreneurship were the key drivers of the food industry in India.
Elyse Peterson, chief executive officer, Tealet, a United States-based importer of tea, made a presentation on the growing opportunities and challenges of the US tea market. She said, “The key opportunity for commodity tea is that it has large buyers, and the ready-to-drink (RTD) sector is growing. Specialty tea has small fragmented buyers, and the average wholesale price is $100 per kg.”
The key challenges for commodity tea are the low competitive price and the lack of loyalty towards suppliers, and for specialty tea, the buyers are fragmented. Moreover, they are very educated and have access to high-quality tea.
Peterson added that the biggest challenge is the United States Food and Drug Administration’s (USFDA) Food Safety Modernisation Act. It is the most stringent food safety regulation in the past 70 years.
Aakash Kotwani, crop manager, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Valagro, SpA (Italy), spoke about the characteristics of abiotic stresses, the impact of these of coffee and mitigating them and crop care solutions for tea or coffee plantation.
Bhushan N Yengade, food industry consultant, Binder Technology Consultancy spoke on BRICS: The food processing industry and its challenges.
He said, “Brazil has 35 per cent of all oranges produced in the world. It is Latin America’s second biggest potato producer. Garlic is the fifth-most economical important vegetable in Brazil and it has the third-largest dairy herd.”
“Russia is the sixth-largest cheese producer and fifth-largest butter producer. India ranks second in fruit and vegetable production in the world after China, which accounts for over 50 per cent of the total global vegetable production,” Yengade added.
He mentioned food security, internal strife, cooperation between food laws, agriculture productivity, trade prices and food policy and intellectual property rights as the challenges faced by the BRICS group, which, besides the aforementioned nations, includes South Africa.
Joachim Eicher, Engineers Coffee Process Technology, Techknow Enterprises Inc, spoke on the science and art of coffee roasting, plant automation and profile roasting. He added, “Roasters come in various types and sizes, such as roasters with control systems, rotating drum rosters and perforated drum roasters.”
Eicher said, “Green coffee is not palatable. Roasting develops the flavours, changes the taste and physical properties, such as colour, moisture and chemical properties. Coffee contains at least 300 chemicals, and during, roasting 650 new aroma compounds are added.”
Sachin Jain, vice-president, Greenbrew, one of the exhibitors, said, “This is the second year that we are participating in the event. Hope we will have a good response at this year’s edition.”
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