The third edition of Food 4 Future - Expo Foodtech (F4F, hereinafter) took place last May 16 - 18 in Bilbao (Spain). In spite of the very short time it has been running, the event is considered to have consolidated its position as a leading European foodtech event with a new record of visitors. A total of 8,372 professional from more than 34 different countries attended the event to learn about the latest technological innovations that are transforming the food industry in all its segments.

Andalusia was the invited region of the event, with a highlighted role for its support to innovation. Amongst the different initiatives of the region, the institutional representative of the Regional Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development of Andalusia mentioned the S3P Thematic Partnership on Traceability & Big Data in the agrifood value chain (T&BD) as a tool to facilitate the digitalisation to the Andalusian agrifood sector.

What is more, during the second day of F4F, in the round table called “The Andalusian Goal: Digital Innovation and Circular Bioeconomy”, Ms Noemí Molina, from the T&BD coordination team presented an overview of this Thematic Partnership, focusing on the activities that are currently being developed. Thanks this, some entities were very interested in the Partnership, its activities and the opportunities it could represent for them.

Besides, this event was a very good opportunity to meet some T&BD partners, such as the Basque Country region, the associated partner INL and stakeholders from the Galician regional node. And, as one of the auditoriums was organised by EIT Food, the Partnership could also meet them and get to know more about their activities and how they could be link to the Partnership’s activities.

The event brought the opportunity to know innovations and showcases called to transform the foodtech sector, a total of 287 exhibiting firms (national but also international large enterprises, SMEs and start-ups) presented their latest solutions in robotics and automation, traceability, processing and packaging machinery for the food industry.

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