Meet our Visitor with Jürgen N. Baur

Mr. Baur, how important is Anuga for your business?

Anuga is rightly the world's leading trade fair for the food industry. In 2019, 8,000 exhibitors and 170,000 trade visitors came from 200 countries. Even if Anuga is a little smaller this year because of the Corona crisis, I can still get a wonderful overview of the product range, observe trends, test innovations and, of course, do business at the show.

One focus of the Anuga program is the presentation of trends and innovations. How important is this trade show program for you?

As the saying goes: competition stimulates business. For me, there's nothing better than being able to offer my customers innovative products that my competitors don't have on their shelves. Finding the "next big thing" is where it all starts. For me, Anuga is the hotspot for food trends. The trade show has developed good ideas for this. Whether that's the "Trend Zone" or the "Taste Innovation Show," there's a platform for all the latest developments. I think that's good.

In your view, will the "world of food" change as a result of the Corona pandemic?

The Corona pandemic is the accelerator for the two major trends of the 21st century: digitalization and sustainability. I am firmly convinced of that. After all, we're already seeing it. It's not just the digital world of work that has received a tremendous boost. The change in consumer shopping behavior is also making itself felt in online food retailing. In addition, the Corona crisis has triggered an intensive discussion about how crisis-proof and future-proof our society is. Under the keyword "resilience," this is also being discussed controversially for the food system. More and more people share the view that the Corona pandemic reinforces the need to produce, process and market food more sustainably. All of us in the food industry cannot ignore this demand.