MILAN – Fruit or vegetable extracts, coffee dispensers with Braille labels, machines able to identify consumers and their tastes: these are just some of the innovations in a market that is evolving so rapidly that it simultaneously represents both technological progress and eco-sustainability.
This is the vending machine industry, which will be represented at Fieramilanocity from 6th to 9th June 2018 by Venditalia, the biggest international show in the Vending Industry. The event, organised by Venditalia Servizi and sponsored by Confida – Italian Vending Machine Association, represents the various product sectors of the entire vending industry chain.
Venditalia is the industry’s biggest showcase at global level, boasting of over 20,000 visitors at each event and in recent weeks it has opened registrations for companies wanting to display their technological innovations at the next edition, which will be its twenty-year anniversary.
The event was actually founded in 1998, being held every two years and next year it will celebrate its eleventh edition.
It is a symbolic milestone, a starting point that highlights how this sector is relatively young but, at the same time, already very established.
In Italy, the vending industry, including the automatic market (automatic machines) and portioned market (pod and capsule machines), is worth a total of 3.4 billion Euros (of which 1.8 billion for the automatic market alone) and supplies 10.5 billion food and drink items per year to 30 million Italians.
There are over 800,000 vending machines supplying coffee, drinks (hot and cold), snacks, sandwiches and ready meals in Italy. The industry boasts around 3,000 companies employing approximately 33,000 workers (Source: Accenture data for CONFIDA). The Italian market thus represents one of the most important for the vending business at European level, fourth by turnover and first by installed machines (source: EVA – European Vending Association).
Venditalia 2018 is therefore seen as the industry’s key international event. In anticipation of seeing the product innovations on show next June, Confida, during HostMilano (the absolute event leader in the Ho.Re.Ca, foodservice, retail, mass distribution and hotel industries being held at Fiera Milano-Rho until 24 October), has organised an informative workshop entitled: “The coffee break becomes digital: new vending technologies” (23 October 2017 at 10:30am at the Food-Technology Lounge Pad. 6 A20 B11).
“The food and drink vending industry is an Italian excellence,” says Ernesto Piloni, President of Venditalia.
“We are world leaders in the market thanks to the major vending machine and payment system manufacturing companies, prestigious product brands (think of Made in Italy coffee) and service management companies that have a business model considered to be the world’s most advanced.
“Innovation” is the keyword of the event and all industry operators involved in cutting-edge research must come to Venditalia to discover vending of the future”.
