SME’s testimonies after Inter FoodTech in India!

From 9 to 11 June 2022, FoodPackLab 2 brought along SMEs in India to participate to the Inter FoodTech Fair! This trip to India allowed SMEs to network with different Indian foodtech and agritech companies in order to establish future collaborations.

Filippo Banzato, CEO of UNFIA:

UNFIA is the ‘Amazon’ of wine trading. A platform to directly connect craft wine producers and buyers with an automated supply chain avoiding intermediaries, trade barriers, and a very limited digitalization. UNFIA allows producers to gain easier access to the global markets, making larger revenues and higher profits, while buyers get higher selection and convenience, lower prices, and bigger price/quality. UNFIA makes the purchase process easier, faster, and cheaper performing on the behalf of the users the most time and cost consuming tasks such as document preparation, shipments set-up, legal and customs clearance, money collection from buyer and payments of taxes, fees, and duties.

 Filippo had a few exchanges after Inter NAMPO in South Africa, which were very good exchanges, and he still has some more people to contact. Filippo was identified by the Italian Chamber of Commerce in South Africa as a potential participant for the first mission.

Before coming to India, he had prepared a list of companies to approach to Inter FoodTech, but he knew from the experience of NAMPO that it is often improvisation on this kind of events, and that is also how we can make some interesting discoveries.

Filippo explains that packaging for wineries is very expensive. His company started a year ago, but he couldn’t imagine it starting before Covid. Many wineries went into bankruptcy because of the Covid pandemic , for instance in Tuscany 25% of the wineries went bankrupt because of it. He is talking to big corporations but his target is the small and medium exploitations (90%), who are mostly family owned, and have no time to look into digitalization or to acquire the knowledge about it. These kinds of exploitations often just always use the same service and pay the price without comparing with other producers because of habits. Filippo ‘s family owns a winery in Italy, they have been making wine for 5 generations since 1899, that is why he knows this ecosystem and domain so well.

His platform could allow the wine makers to save 30% of costs. They often don’t realize how much money they are wasting on packaging, but they realize how much money is not made in selling. It can currently take 3-4 weeks to get in touch with a bottling company. The digitalization of this process thanks to UNFIA could speed up the process a lot, with a tool where everything is there instantly for the wine makers.

The market is bigger in France, that is why Filippo Banzato is implanted in the Paris Region. It is 4 times bigger than in Italy and 2 times bigger than in Spain. There is an interest from French wineries, for instance Filippo managed to get 50 of them on board in Alsace and Moselle with one single presentation in a fair. In Italy the wineries are not used to join together like in France, they are more competitive, so it is more difficult for UNFIA to reach them at once.

UNFIA only works in B2B. they want to build an ecosystem of wine. It would also avoid some barriers including languages for the businesses. This field of activity is one of the less digitalized so that is the reason why there is a market for UNFIA.

The platform will launch in 2 months.

“ I am Filippo Banzato, co-founder and CEO of UNFIA. We are developing a platform which directly connects craft wine producers and buyers with an automated supply chain avoiding intermediaries, trade barriers. We are here at Inter FoodTech to find some partners that we can collaborate with, to invite them to join our platform and offer their products and services to our producers, and digitalize the ecosystem of the wine industry! “

Valerio Semeraro, CEO of Sicuro Food:

Sicuro Food uses blockchain for certification. They mean to help the farmers to be more efficient, save time and also to save costs. The company works directly with the food industry producers. They allow them to track all supply chain from farm to consumers. As there are strict regulations for food in Europe, they allow producers to meet all these regulations more easily.

” Sicuro Food is born from the need to rediscover the authenticity of the local product, of the product grown in our lands, and from the need to be protected in the purchase of raw materials and that can be certified with new innovative and latest generation systems.

In today’s agrifood market, the difficulty in certifying the origin and quality of an agricultural product is as much a problem for the consumer as it is for farms. The integrated secure-chain system is a technological innovation able to guarantee in total transparency the entire traceability of the production chain and the processing of agricultural products, ensuring the maximum guarantee to the final consumer because the data entered into the system are constantly controlled by our team and through our ai software even more accurate and secure. And we definitively change the self-control documents into digital documents with our blockchain platform so that the control is automatic, secure and reliable.

At the Mumbai Inter FoodTech 2023 fair we were able to identify important machine manufacturers for our brand that will soon expand not only in Italy but also in Europe. A brand designed to connect producers and consumers in a unique and innovative place. I want to thank for this mission FoodPackLab 2, the people like, Filippo Banzato and Gawel Walczak who have contributed significantly to the achievement of international goals. Thank you so much! “

Martjin Boerkamp of inPhocal

InPhocal uses a unique laser beam technology that can speed up laser marking systems; allows for marking on curved surfaces without loss in quality; and can be focused down to smaller spot sizes than current technology, resulting in higher precision for wafer dicing.

Martijn Boerkamp met very interesting people at Inter FoodTech, he was looking for companies to implement his technology of light marking for food. He found that the fair was quite smaller than what he expected but the contacts were very interesting and he made some good links.

“Hi, my name is Martijn Boerkamp, I’m from the company inPhocal from the Netherlands. We develop a unique laser marking technology that we could apply in production lines where we could remove ink from production lines. We’re here in India to expand our markets, to find interesting partners to utilize our technology. So far I have already made really great contacts and hoping to make some more in the next few days.”

Salvador Diaz of Hamer Packaging Technology

Hamer Packaging Technology, based in La Granada, Barcelona, manufactures a complete range of thermoforming machines for disposable plastic packaging and a comprehensive range of form-fill and sealing lines for blister packaging. The company is represented by sales partners in more than 12 countries worldwide.

“I am Salvador Diaz, Sales & Marketing Director at Hamer Packaging.

In our facilities, we design and manufactures equipment for the packaging market, especially thermoforming machines to produce single-use plastic packaging, as well as automatics and semi-automatic lines to produce blister packs.

Our R&D&I capability distinguishes us and allows us to incorporate new solutions based on 4.0 technologies, such as remote equipment management, or innovation in new materials such as cellulose pulp.

Our mission to India has been very useful and productive, as our goal was to come and find potential customers interested in our machinery made to produce cellulose pulp trays and blister; as well as try to find any kind of synergy or future collaboration with other companies.

We had meetings with different kind of companies, such as Dental Labs, Packaging Producers, Film Suppliers, Distributors / Agents, and Public Administration Organisations; with a total of 9 meetings. Where we achieved 5 potential customers, a potential collaboration of an organization to help us improve our packaging strategy for India; as well as a distributor who will represent Hamer Packaging Technology on Middle East and India.

I would like to thank FPL consortium to plan this International Mission and bringing us here, because so far, this trip to India to know and understand more about the market and find first customers, has led us to expand the portfolio of contacts in Mumbai.”