"The IFFA is the world's largest meat processing exhibition," CFS communications director Mark van den Bosch told FoodProductionDaily.com. "It is most important that we participate at the event as customers from all over the world will be there."
The problem, of course, is that meat is a difficult raw material to exhibit. It needs to be handled with care, and can go off very easily. It is also difficult to demonstrate what processing equipment can achieve, as customers are often interested in seeing the finished product for themselves.
"We therefore came up with the idea of offering free flights from the exhibition in Frankfurt to our facility in Eindhoven,"said van den Bosch. "There we have full-scale equipment where we can set up a series of demonstrations, from grinding meat through to packaging."
Van den Bosch believes that this will better enable customers to judge the new processing equipment for themselves. "This type of thing has never been done before," he said. "It is very unusual - bringing interested customers to the factory itself. Customers can fly to Holland in the morning and back to Frankfurt again, on the same day."
The company plans to run the demonstrations in the Netherlands one day either side of the event, in case visitors do not wish to miss out on the show itself.
A wide range of demonstrations will be on display, including fully-automated case-ready systems that put portioned meat into packages."All demonstrations in Holland will be run with real meat or poultry, so you can see, hear, fell and taste for yourself." CFS also plans to maintain a presence at the IFFA event in Frankfurt though a virtual reality show.