June 03, 2014

03/06/14: VIV Europe 2014: topnotch business event

“I want to thank everyone involved in VIV Europe for making it so successful.” VIV Worldwide project manager Ruwan Berculo is happy with the VIV Europe 2014 results. The world expo for the global animal husbandry and processing received exceptionally high approval ratings from visitors and exhibitors. The organisers met their objectives to create the best possible business environment for the industry.

Berculo considers the success a joint effort. “In fact, I think its success was founded especially on the confidence that the industry had in creating and investing in a world expo which would bring everyone together at an important time for the future of animal protein supply and demand. Our job as organisers was to make sure everyone was welcomed and given every assistance in their visit.”
Compact and comfortable
“Right from the start, our focus had been to create the best possible business environment for professionals from the industries of poultry, pork, feed, meat and fish,” says Berculo, “Exactly as we promised, we have had a show that was businesslike, compact, comfortable, informative and more welcoming than any other event in the past.”

Networking and matchmaking
The organisers’ main objective was to be best for business for people from all parts of the world and create fruitful matchmaking between buyers and sellers in  different ways. Ruwan Berculo explains: “For the first time at a VIV exhibition there were opportunities for people to meet informally in smaller groups at networking sessions, dedicated to specific countries and regions in Africa, China and Latin America.” These sessions were very well attended and there was also a positive response to the invitation for visitors to take part in a day of field trips to locations in the Dutch poultry, feed and pig sectors.

Sustainability and efficiency
“The speakers in our conference programme did an excellent job of emphasising both the opportunities and the challenges that lie ahead for animal protein production around the world. Sustainability is essential and we heard a calculation that producing poultry and fish can be as sustainable as the production of a crop such as cashew nuts in terms of use of resources. But the need for efficiency was underlined in the same context, because it seems that the weakest performers in farming account for over half of all carbon dioxide emissions associated with farms.”

Innovation Awards
A world of new products awaited visitors to VIV Europe 2014, where a total of 38 products were nominated for the four categories of the show’s Innovation Awards. Marel Stork Poultry Processing headed the Processing category and won the overall award with its SmartWeigher line for accurate grading and distribution of broilers at the highest possible processing speeds. Kemin took the prize in the category Health and Nutrition with its Lipid Evaluation Test that provides feed formulators with a nutritional profile of sources of oils and fats for poultry and livestock diets. Hotraco Agri won in the Farming and Housing category with its Fortica touch-screen poultry house computer that gives the user complete control over all housing processes such as climate, feed and water, egg flow and animal weighing. In the fourth category, Hatching and Breeding, the winner was HatchTech with its revolutionary HatchCare system for higher hatchability rates and better chick quality in which a key feature is the early feeding of the newly hatched chicks.

Personality Awards
The show additionally recognized four famous names in the global poultry industry, who became the latest recipients of the European Poultry Personality Awards co-sponsored by Positive Action Publications and VIV.  Dr. Piet Simons was announced as VIV Poultry Personality 2014; he is a past president of the World’s Poultry Science Association who is now an Ambassador for the Dutch Poultry Centre after a career in poultry research. Otto van Tuijl, technical director of Aviagen EPI, won the VIV Poultry Breeder Personality Award 2014 and Jack Hazenbroek, creator of poultry processing systems company Systemate Holland, was awarded the title VIV Meat Personality 2014. Nigel Horrox, who will be the next president of the World’s Veterinary Poultry Association and is the owner and publisher of Positive Action Publications, received a special Oeuvre award from the VIV Europe organizers to recognize his contribution to the international development of the poultry sector.

High ratings
In show-time surveys conducted among the 20,214 visitors and the 591 exhibiting companies, people visiting the event awarded it an unprecedented 7.9 average score (on a scale where 10 indicates the highest satisfaction), while exhibitors rated it at 8.1. “To have such high ratings is very unusual for large European trade shows,” comments VIV Europe exhibition manager Ruwan Berculo. “It is better than we could have wished for.” VIV Europe could have been called VIV World, given the fact that over half of its visitors came from non-European countries.  Altogether the event over its three days was attended by people from 136 countries.

Planning has started already for the next VIV Europe, which will return to Utrecht in The Netherlands in the spring of 2018.  
The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine GFMT which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.

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