Spokespeople:
- Andy Mather, Brand Director – Vitafoods Europe at Informa Markets
- Kinga Wojcicka-Swiderska, Head of Content – Vitafoods Europe at Informa Markets
What is new at Vitafoods Europe 2023 and why should nutraceutical businesses attend this year?
Andy Mather: Visitors to Vitafoods Europe will get even more out of their event experience in 2023. As the world’s leading event for nutraceutical collaboration, our aim is to provide more insight and inspiration each year than ever before. In particular, we’re focusing on the areas that will drive the industry – and businesses – forward, like sustainability. Research shows that a quarter of consumers want products that are sustainably certified.[1] That’s a significant proportion of the population that nutraceutical brands need to align their values with. This year, we’re debuting the Sustainability Resource Centre to help brands do just that. A zone dedicated to all things sustainability, visitors will find solutions, innovations and ideas that can help them enact real transformational change towards providing sustainable nutrition for all in the years to come. We’re also spotlighting cutting-edge innovation at this year’s Vitafoods Europe. In addition to Innovation Tours and the Startup Pavilion, we’re also hosting the brand new Vitafoods Europe Startup Innovation Challenge. Here, visitors can discover trailblazing nutraceutical startups as they pitch their ideas live at the Vitafoods Insights Theatre in front of an audience. Of course, all of this will take place alongside many long-running visitor favourites, such as the New Ingredients and New Products Zones, the Tasting Centre, and the Vitafoods Insights Theatre.
What are some of the key trends happening across the industry and where are the opportunities for innovation?
Kinga Wojcicka-Swiderska: The biggest trend shaping nutraceutical NPD right now is the shifting consumer mindset towards proactivity and holistic health. Consumers increasingly recognise that health – including both physical and cognitive elements – is interconnected, and they’re taking proactive steps to manage their overall wellbeing. This is opening up significant opportunities for the development of holistic products that tap into multiple health areas at once, including across immunity, healthy ageing, mental wellbeing, and physical fitness, to name a few. At the same time, however, consumers are rejecting the ‘one-product-fits-all’ approach. Plus, instead of ‘mass-personalised’ products based simply on sex or age, they want holistic health solutions that are tailored to their individual needs. This presents perhaps the biggest opportunity for innovation. Brands can tap into this by partnering with other businesses – such as tech and wearable companies – to create solutions that use data to enable even deeper personalisation for nutritional solutions. It’s a very exciting prospect, and one that will be explored in depth at the Vitafoods Europe Conference (May 9-10). This year, the Conference will return in a brand new format on the main show floor, bringing together a range of industry experts – including scientific researchers and global nutrition players – to dive into current consumer trends and how brands can innovate in holistic, personalised and on-trend nutritional products.
How will technology influence the future of the industry, and how can brands tap into these at Vitafoods Europe 2023?
Andy Mather: Technological and scientific advances are shaping the future of the nutrition industry in some very fundamental ways. For example, cutting-edge technology is rapidly accelerating the deeper personalisation of nutraceuticals. The impact of wearables, for instance, is providing unprecedented insight into consumer wellbeing. But it’s not the only technology that’s helping us take this step forward – microbiome sequencing is another novel technology that enables us to gain an unrivalled understanding of individuals’ health. This is being used in a multitude of ways already, from analysing the gut microbiome to support better digestive health, to gaining a better insight into women’s sexual and reproductive health. In addition to this, emerging technologies like precision fermentation are increasingly being used in novel ways. Used to recreate food and nutrition products with a precise nutritional profile – such as replicating meat and dairy without using animals – there are companies using precision fermentation for truly innovative applications. For example, creating breast milk outside of the human body to feed future generations, or to produce foods that remove the nutrients cancer cells depend on to grow. The impact of using these technologies at-scale on human health could be immeasurable. This year, futurist thinkers and C-suite industry leaders will dive into these incredible developments at the Future of Nutrition Summit (May 8) to help brands not only understand these exciting opportunities, but also realise how they can leverage them for their own business to shape the future of nutrition.
[1] Mintel, Sustainability Barometer, 2022
Innovations in Food (& Beverage) Technology is a quarterly magazine distributed globally both in Print and Digital formats. www.innovationsfood.com. Twitter: @Innovfoodtech. Instagram: @innovationsinfoodtechnology. Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/terry-prior52
