Horecava 2020: sustainability and automation
On 14 January PCV visited the Horecava, the most important fair in the Netherlands for all professionals in food service. The fair was very well-attended by a large number of visitors. At the Start-up LAB, over 50 start-ups showed their innovations. In the TrendLAB exhibitors were grouped in themes around food, one of them being “Transformation & Circularity”.
Some highlights:
- Hobart, Rational, Meike, Rhima and Winterhalter are all producers of professional kitchen equipment. Many of them presented solutions for dealing with kitchen waste, for example composting solutions for food scraps. This way companies are completing their portfolio with products suiting the entire workflow of food in the kitchen, including the discarding of food. Regulations are becoming ever more strict with respect to “zero waste”.
- Vegan products are booming! While it was just a niche a couple of years ago, veganism is now a theme at nearly every food supplier. Next to this trend there is also an increasing number of companies that supply local and artisanal products.
- Depa, well known for their disposable cups and tableware, presented their return machine for disposables to ensure proper collecting and recycling.
- TopKrop and Dry Hydroponics presented a system for the growing of crops like lettuce on floating Styrofoam. This allows the crops to remain clean and dry, so they can be packed and consumed right away. Because of the closed system, water remains in the system (except for water extracted by the crop). This prevents loss and washing away of fertilizers, making it a more sustainable solution.
There was also a hall dedicated to coffee, tea and pastries. Nearly all of the large players in this market were present: Lavazza, Melitta, Nespresso, Lattiz, Franke, WMF and many more. Highlights on this topic:
- Overall there were a lot of roasters with a very broad range of coffee flavours.
- Among them was Dutch start-up SpiceKix. One of their products is coffee with ground spices; creating these blends come with certain challenges.
- Milk foam printer: German start-up Colorato presented a printer for milk foam on the stand of Melitta. With their product, images can be “printed” on the top of a milk-based coffee drink. For PCV they made a “Fred”duccino on the spot!
More milk foam, but not for coffee: Blender Brothers, a German start-up, showed their fully automatical milkshake machine that creates milk shakes from 4 different ingredients and a machine that can make up to 4L of ice cream every hour.
Responding to the trend of automation, ICE Robotics gave a sneak peek of their professional cleaning robots that will be officially launched at the Interclean in May 2020 in Amsterdam. The “Whiz” is a vacuum cleaner that can learn how to clean a room by the user pushing it along the desired route. . After this, the robot can clean the room autonomously, with a number of sensors that allow it to clean even when people are present, for up to 3 hours at a stretch. For example hotel corridors could be cleaned this way. The “Emma” is a wet floor cleaner that is suitable for manual control but can also operate fully automatical.
