BEHIND THE SCENES: At Gulfood 2013

Established first in 1987, the annual Gulfood trade show has made a name for itself as one of the best food and beverage related events on the industry’s annual calendar.

With guests arriving from far and wide, particularly this year as the show enjoys an 11% visitor increase, it’s essential that the show continues to top the previous year. This year’s edition takes place from February 25-28 at the Dubai World Trade Centre.

CME: What’s in store for the 2013 edition of Gulfood?
MN: We always say this is the biggest annual food and hospitality event, and over the last few years it has been completely sold out. It has reached its capacity, occupying every square inch of the venue. This year we can honestly say it is going to be even bigger. Our management has agreed to invest in a bespoke structure that will be just for Gulfood. Last year we went into the exhibition with more than 900 companies that wanted to attend but that we didn’t have room for – and of course trade shows are only a reflection of the market you are serving. Clearly this market is very attractive, particularly to the global producer.

The emergent economies are in their next stage of growth and Gulfood has always been a fantastic way of capturing that. The additional space gives us more than 12,000 square metres of additional exhibition space; the chance to bring in 400 or 500 new suppliers who haven’t had a chance to participate before – so lots of new things to see and lots of development around the show. So yes it is going to be bigger but it’s not just about how big it is, it is how our suppliers can bring in a wider range of product. We can have more countries around the world participating that can show off the broader range of their product.

GULFOOD AT A GLANCE - STAT ATTACK 

3,816 Exhibitors
100,898sqm of Exhibition Space
110 International Pavilions
68,681 Trade Visitors
152 Countries Represented
11% Visitor Increase
2,000 Competing Chefs

CME: What international trends are you noticing that will be exhibited at the show?
MN: One of the new trends you see is there seems to be a particular affinity for South American food; we’re seeing a lot of Latin America looking at the Middle East as their next growth market. This year we’ve had a big participation from Brazil; they are our country of honour – we’ve got Peru joining us for the first time as well.

CME: With over 4200 exhibitors and just four days, what tools are in place so people get the most of the event?
MN: You’d have to be very busy to get round them all so what you want to do is provide the best navigation tools for your visitors. We are providing world class navigation tools for our visitors to make it easier for them to get round the show. This year you’ll see the Gulfood mobile app; now we can type in a product and it will use your Smartphone almost as a compass – mapping where those exhibitors are, giving you their contact details and you can even use your Smartphone to take you to your next appointment.
We’re also bringing in things like the Gulfood Connections programme – in the advent of social media we are now deploying those sorts of familiar tools for people, allowing them to build their own profile as either an exhibitor or a visitor. They can describe what products they want to see, what buyers, regions, geographies or territories they want to reach. It will allow people to pre-plan what they are going to do more and schedule meeting time.
We recognise people have incredible time pressures. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify your time out of the office for any reason these days. We have a concept now called the Power Hours as part of the conferences. You can pick, choose and select sessions that have a relevance to you and whether you want to be there on the Tuesday at 11am for the session on HR, if not then that’s fine – you can pick out the components that suit you. We have brought a workshop where we can cover these things in much greater detail.

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CME: Why should exhibitors be excited about the show?
MN: We came into the show with 900 companies last year wanting to join the event. That gives you an indication of the level of demand here – it’s an exciting market, growing very fast – that can be quite captivating for exhibitors. What I think exhibitors would say is that they do such a large proportion of their annual business here – of course many of them will be doing business with old customers and new customers and many of them get customers from markets that they just wouldn’t have considered – we get visitors from more than 150 countries now – it provides a business development opportunity that you don’t find in many other methods. Nothing replaces face to face contact.
For them it’s also exciting to see what else is happening in the market – sometimes you’re so focused on growing your own business it’s not often you get the opportunity to look out there and see what the competition is doing. You need to be able to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s coming around the corner. I think our exhibitors have found that quite interesting as well – seeing what everybody else is doing.

CME: What is on this year’s conference agenda?
MN: Conferences tend to reflect where the exhibitors are directing us to in terms of our own product offering, which again is largely market led – acquiring good information, a chance to be able to network with your competitors and peer groups – those all have value in a conference environment. We’ll see an expanded processing and packaging conference this year – it was represented on a programme last year but some of the issues remain the same; how do I expand, what new markets do I tap into, what are the regulations that are changing every five minutes that I am going to have to future proof my business against?
You’ll see many different people coming to the event that are looking for business improvement tools for the future, they will determine a new concept, business strategy or new region or bring an entrepreneurial mindset to an established business and you’ll want those concepts and strategies represented in the conference programme and then you’ll want to see that picked up by some of the tactical solutions picked up on the floor of the show; the obvious things – new concepts, leadership, business management, staffing, food security, food safety – how to put acid value into the business.

CME: What are the things visitors should look out for?
MN: A lot of the exhibitors want their big reveal at the show so have remained fairly tight-lipped on what’s being launched. If I wanted to direct people to what they should see around the show, it’d definitely be the Salon Culinaire. The Culinaire is one of the biggest in the world. I can’t think of many of that size that run on an annual basis. It’s an awful lot of work for the guys at Emirates Culinary Guild to put together – 23 categories, 2000 applications – the amount of work that goes into it.
You’ve got the perennial favourites like the ice carving stage and you see people up there with chisels and chainsaws and ice flying everywhere, you see how creative and talented these people are.