by Shannon Parsons, International Petfood Magazine
The 2024 International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE) was an incredible event this year, setting new records with exhibitors, attendees and more. Held on January 30 – February 1, 2024, at the Georgia World Congress Centre in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, the three-day B2B show had staggering figures, proving the trade shows rightful place as one number event in America.
Attendees
Sponsored by the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, American Feed Industry Association and the Meat Institute, IPPE is the world’s largest annual feed, meat and poultry industry event and they proved this with two new records. A total of 1432 exhibitors shared the exhibitor space that spanned a total of 620,850 square feet.
They also had a third record with 9063 international visitors from 133 countries out of their 31,353 registered attendees beating their goal of 31,000. In previous years, holding the strongest international presence with 45 percent on the international attendees, but this year Canada overtook with a whooping 14.9 percent out of all registered attendees.
“Our international presence has bumped up a little bit. We’ve been running at 24-25 percent and we’re at 28-29 percent internationals and that’s representatives from 131 countries,” says Nath Morris, President of IPPE, when speaking of the attendees on the final day of the show.
International Petfood were also able to meet many of the exhibitors and attendees this years, using IPPE as the networking opportunity it is and creating new and reestablishing old friendships with various companies such as Andritz, Vetagro, Buhler, dsm-firmenich and more.
Charity
IPPE, alongside Hawkins Inc and WATT Global Media were also able to donate a total of US$14,500 to the Atlanta Community Food Bank for its ‘Giving Back to Atlanta’ campaign. This is only part of the combined amount however, as a further US$4824 were contributed from the Expo Auctions, US$2160 from B and B Glass Studio/The Glass House and a myriad of IPPE attendees made individual donations totalling US$11,830. Altogether, this year IPPE raised a combined amount of US$33,314, effectively feeding 10,000 meals to families throughout metro Atlanta and North Georgia.
Some interesting topics were discussed as well between the International Petfood CEO Roger Gilbert and a few important people, one of which was the recently appointed President of IPPE itself, Nath Morris. He explains all the achievements of this year’s IPPE, what the show entails and how it’s continuing to grow.
We were also able to interview Vice Chairman of Famsun, Greg Liu, who shows us the models of their extruders and pellet mills, explaining how they work and what customers could use themselves along with new developments being made focusing on more research on automation and AI.
Next time
IPPE 2025 will be held on January 28 – 31, 2025 at its usual Georgia World Congress Centre in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. We hope to attend next year and to see you all there. For more information on the event, please check the website https://www.ippexpo.org/
This Event Report was published in the March 2024 Edition of International Petfood Magazine.
