The Agrofood Plastpack Ethiopia trade exhibition will be held February 3 to 5 at the Millennium Hall. The exhibition is expected to host more than two thousand professional visitors and is being organized by Fair trade, a German trade fair specialist along with Ethiopian partners. The exhibition aims to increase awareness about agro-processing and innovative packaging technologies designed to maintain high quality products.
“At 200 million euros in 2014, Ethiopia is East and Central Africa’s largest importer of food processing and packaging machines with an annual growth rate of 38 percent between 2010 and 2014. Global players like Heineken, Nestle and Unilever have entered the Ethiopian market and have invested hundreds of thousands of US dollars in food and beverage production facilities. Now is the perfect time to start a professional trade show for the Ethiopian business community”, stated Martin Marz, Fairtrade’s managing director.
Currently, Ethiopia is the second largest importer of plastics and packaging machines with an annual growth rate of 25 percent and the largest importer of plastics in primary forms with an annual growth rate of 46 percent between 2010 and 2014, reaching 527 million Euros in 2014.
“During the last few years, Ethiopia’s food imports have increased 21 percent annually, standing at USD 2.74 billion in 2015. Thanks to successful export products such as vegetables and fruits, coffee and tea, Ethiopian food exports increased by 13 percent annually, to more than 2.4 million USD currently,” said Marz, underlining the need for increased technological capabilities in the packaging sector to increase value added exports.
The exhibition will include companies from 14 countries such as Kenya, Taiwan, Thailand the Netherlands, Togo, Ukraine and several others. A majority of the exhibitors will come from France and Germany.
[Capital Ethiopia]