The Food & Beverage Innovation Forum 2019 (FBIF2019), was held in Hangzhou International Expo Center in China on April 23, 2019. The forum, themed as “Gaining New Momentum from Open Innovation,” focused on the new format in the food industry. More than 120 global speakers and 4,000+ decision-makers from 700+ leading companies — including Nestle, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Mondelēz International, Nongfu Spring, Yili and Mengniu — were in attendance.

On the first day of the FBIF2019, the Plenary Session officially started after the opening remark by Isabella Hsu, the Founder & CEO of Simba Events. Isabella pointed that FBIF not only kept focusing on its own growth from 2014 to 2019, but also continually observed the trends of global F&B industries, and found that more and more small but promising companies showed their strong product power, which has attracted the great attention of the top 100 companies in the global food industry.

The Conference Chairman Aalt Dijkhuizen, the President of Dutch Topsector Agri & Foodand the former President & CEO of Wageningen University & Research, presented his speech and pointed out that the tremendous changes in the F&B markets in China, such as the rising of new middle class, the growing spending power of the millennials, the increasing demand for healthy aging and individualization, are urging the enterprises to be more open to the changes.

The Internationalization of China’s Domestic Brands

In the FBIF2018, the topic "On the Internationalization of China’s Domestic Brands" was discussed. This year, the organization started with the same topic, to continue the thinking and start the new journey of this year. What does the global enterprise mean? What challenges do Chinese brands meet while going abroad? How to build and enhance the cultural awareness of the brand? 

The Overview of Trends in 2019: Consumption & Marketing

In this forum, Gisele Gurgel, director of global business information and insights of Tetra Pak, shared the global consumption trend in 2019. “Today, at this moment, you are experiencing the slowest change in your future life.” Gurgel conceived some future scenarios of the F&B industry: door-to-door delivery and small community stores will gradually replace large and medium-sized supermarkets; personalization will become the norm of manufacturing; brands will keep segmenting; sustainable food and packaging will become new rules all over the world.

Another topic on trend at the event, many food giants at home and abroad have carried out joint innovation through external cooperation, or cooperated with start-ups to complement each other, due to rapidly changing market and business environment.

The Food & Beverage Innovation Forum (FBIF) is one of the most influential F&B industry forums in Asia-Pacific. For more information, visit FBIF.