Beau Taylor – IFFA 2016 Travel Journal

Beau’s passion for production management and process optimisation in the meat processing industry sees him constantly pushing the envelope in terms of industry innovation. Beau thrives on learning and is sharing this by journaling his impending trip to IFFA, the leading global meat processing industry expo.

Beau Taylor Wiley IFFA

IFFA is a rare opportunity for those in the food industry to keep an eye on the horizon of innovation in the industry. Occuring in Frankfurt, Germany in early May, IFFA is an excellent chance to see the latest and greatest in the food processing sector, but I’ll be looking forward to seeing how real equipment applications are keeping up with technological advances. The ‘who’s who’ of the industry will be attending and I’m keen to see how . Improvements in CO2 stunning, robotics and carcass chilling seem to have realised advancements in recent years.  It will be interesting to see what the players in these areas have to showcase.

Another point of interest for me will be Marel’s recently launched new high volume, low pressure former which seems delicate enough to maintain product quality over mass production volumes. Given Marel’s reputation for developing globally-renowned, high quality equipment, I’m excited to see what else they might bring to IFFA beyond their new forming application. This will be an excellent opportunity to learn more about the latest developments in their 3D revolution drum technology and how that is applied with this former.

On top of this, thermoforming and tray-sealing juggernaut Multivac will be bringing out some of their most recent innovations and they will be another must-see exhibitor. Multivac also dropped some clues about new technological advancements on their thermoforming equipment, so it will be interesting to see what else they plan on bringing to IFFA this year.

I’m also looking forward to seeing what Germany has to offer outside of IFFA. We’ll be making a few site visits to food facilities across Germany, so I can’t wait to see what the autobahns are like to drive on. Sadly, I’ll be too far north to make it to the Black Forest in the southwest but I’ve heard you can get pretzels anywhere in Germany which is a decent trade-off. We’ll also be taking a detour to visit some facilities in Denmark with a delegation of MLA affiliates and while there it would be great to pick up some authentic Lego…for my kids.

Stay tuned to the website and connect with me on LinkedIn for more updates after I head off to Frankfurt this week.