Food and Drinks Innovate Asia Virtual Conference 2021 (August 25-26), Asean’s biggest back-to-back learning event series created by Escom Events, concluded a two-day insightful “Eight in One Virtual Conference + Exhibition” on the latest food and drink solutions and trends that ride the wave of consumerism in Asia, especially in the Indochina region.
In view of the pandemic, this event has created a massive revolutionary idea starting with the reshaping of the digital future, changing shopping behavior, making products sustainable, and the long-term tradeoff for policymakers in the food and drinks industry, which caused a significant impact brought by the ongoing Covid-19.
Recognizing this transformation, Food and Drinks Innovate Asia 2021 has shed light on recent shifts in consumers’ purchases and attitudes around the world. Through collaboration with consumer analysts and business owners’ insights, the team has identified new opportunities in the marketing world.
The long-term fundamentals of the ASEAN region have evolved differently and are said to be on their way to recovery in mid-2021. This causes changes in the consumers’ spending patterns in the post-pandemic world including the Philippines, making them particularly vulnerable.
Since consumers around the world are becoming picky eaters, food manufacturers are trying to revitalize their way of producing food. As mentioned during the virtual conference, companies such as Nestle, PepsiCo and Tyson Foods are investing in the need to produce ready meals that are full packed with healthy ingredients, tasty, and convenient for the consumers.
It was revealed during the 2-day virtual conference that consumers who are looking to reduce their meat intake are switching to plant-based diets. According to experts, consumers can expect more products from different plants in the remaining part of 2021 which includes ingredients such as fungi and mushroom, algae and pulses.
Brand experimentation is also becoming a trend in the food and drinks industry to catch innovative tastes that consumers have never tried before.
The Pandemic has blurred the lines between the food service and retail industry, where restaurants are forced to adopt a delivery, take-out system in order to continue its operations.
Challenges in the Food & Beverage Industry are ever increasing which has led to a lot of resources being spent in research and development to understand and overcome them. “Natural” is a megatrend that has seen a significant rise over the last decade, at the same time global natural resources are being stretched to its limit.
Demand for food packaging worldwide is growing at 5.6% annually. With the Covid-19 pandemic, on-demand food delivery is forecasted to grow more rapidly. This adds to an already problematic plastic crisis caused by plastic food packaging.
Thus, the leading F&B packaging directors discussed how some business sectors and manufacturers turn their heads and go for sustainable packaging or the practice of single-use plastics and expanded polystyrene in take-out and dine-in packaging.
In the second half of 2021, AI-driven innovation on food and drinks packaging design and productions that tailors for the entire chain are coming. This will limit the use of en masse human production to reduce labor costs and increase outputs.
Food Innovation is a greater concern as speaker Mohd Salim bin Dulatti, Senior Director for Food Safety and Quality Division, Ministry of Health Malaysia imparted that “Innovation should transform the government towards automated and transparent processes, along with optimized workflows that will ensure efficient data management and improved quality control system.”
“Innovation provides a way to be more responsive to change and to respond to the future rather than the past,” he added.
Key takeaways from the event:
- Discover and define the latest trends in consumer behavior and buying patterns in the ASEAN region
- Investment opportunities in Indochina
- How to distinguish your product in a saturated market
- Cleaner label without sacrificing taste or tradition
- Winning by innovative ingredients
- Food product life-cycle journey
- AI empowered food packaging
- Green & Smart food factory
- Marketing Innovations in a digital world
Moreover, the two-day event is filled with delegates mainly from government authorities, food and beverage producers, farms, food retailers, end users (restaurants, malls etc,.) and the solution providers.
“I am quite happy with the result of the event, we have a lot of high profile attendees, some are from end users side, some from business partner side and there was a lot of learning from the speakers and we look forward to more of this kind of opportunities,” said Leonard Zapa, Market Development Manager, HP INC.
More than 1,000 online attendees participated in the fully virtual iteration of the event including 600+ senior delegates, 300+ companies or organizations, 50+ speakers and panelists and featured over 40 dedicated sessions and 100+ conference partners.
It has never been clearer that food and drinks companies need to be able to learn quickly, be more adoptive to change, and innovate to address adversity and this event has leveraged its ability to compete and call for actions in the current and future state of the environment.
