News on Food Trends from Belgium

In September 2015, the United Nations (UN) met to agree to reduce per capita food waste by half by 2030. TOMRA Sorting Food explains how their activities impact food waste

The Europatat Congress 2016 will take place in Brussels (Belgium) on 1 & 2 June 2016, under the slogan “Not business as usual!”

In December Potato Processor Agristo completed a new phase in the construction of the new deepfreeze warehouse in Nazareth, the installation of the automated stacker cranes. Completion of the cold-store is planned for late March 2016

Continued advances in automation and robotics are making the global food manufacturing and processing industries safer, more efficient and able to deliver higher profits, according to TOMRA Sorting Food.

EU and US negotiators were meeting this week in Miami, USA for the 11th round of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. Negotiations on tariffs and quotas could have serious implications – either positive or negative - for the agricultural and primary food transformation sector as markets would open up.

Celcaa, FoodDrinkEurope, SACAR and Copa and Cogeca held a high-level Seminar in Brussels today to
discuss the new EU promotion policy for agri-food products which is entering into force on 1 December

With a value chain wide approach, McCain, PepsiCo, SCA, Sodexo, Ardo, Unilever Food Solutions and WWF have joined forces to fight against food waste in the food services sector starting in Europe.

Scientific results of the potato field trials in Flanders and the Netherlands demonstrate that gene stacking is necessary for a strong and lasting resistance to late blight (Phytophthora infestans).

Starch Europe published today the summary report of an updated Life Cycle Assessment study of the European Starch industry

Researchers from Ghent University and the International Potato Center have discovered that sweet potatoes naturally contain genes from a bacterium. Because of the presence of this 'foreign' DNA, sweet potato can be seen as a 'natural gmo'.

Romain Cools, secretary of the Belgian Potato Processors Association Belgapom expresses his views on the free potato market.

Mooij Agro reveals the Croptimiz-r storage computer with personalized overview of your store at Interpom | Primeurs.

Starch Europe (formerly AAF, Association des Amidonniers et Féculiers) announced its support for the European Commission’s Communication for a European Industrial Renaissance at an event held in Brussels October 15.

Europatat, the European Potato Trade Association, announces the appointment of Raquel Izquierdo de Santiago as the new Secretary General of the association.

Belgian Potato packer Pomuni has acquired its competitor Potato Masters in order to scale up operations in a stagnant European potato market [Update: no, they did not]

With two months still to go before the opening of INTERPOM | PRIMEURS 2014, the event is already bigger than last time – and virtually fully booked.

The Dewulf group has reached a preliminary agreement for the acquisition of Miedema, the one to go to for development and production of modern technology for storage, sorting, transport and planting of potatoes.

Belgapom is partnering with research institutions to developed a platform to increase the efficiency of potato production, combining data from drones and satellites.