AMFRESH hosts fresh produce industry’s Festival of Fresh at Alconbury Weald

On 21 June 2023, the UK’s biggest fresh produce business AMFRESH hosted Festival of Fresh 2023, welcoming Britain’s fruit and vegetable industry and its international partners to its new state-of-the-art facility in Alconbury Weald.

Organised by leading UK fruit and vegetable trade publication Fresh Produce Journal (FPJ), the event brought together 300 people from across the sector for a day of networking, hard- hitting interviews with FPJ’s team of journalists and delicious food.

Celebrating some of the best innovations in Britain’s fresh produce business, the open-air festival featured a wide array of exhibitors and provided a platform for the sector to network and discuss the pressing challenges in continuity of supply, inflation, climate change, R&D and seasonal labour recruitment, among other hot topics.

The conference programme, curated by FPJ, included contributions from leading figures in the UK’s fruit and vegetable supply chains. Speakers included retailers, suppliers, importers, marketers, and breeders, as well as trade bodies, retail analysts and food redistribution companies.

Sessions were divided between two tents: the Inspiration Stage for interviews, panels, and presentations on the hot topics in the trade; and the Innovation Tent for presentations on cutting-edge new technologies shaping the future of the industry.

The programme included insightful presentations from AMFRESH, as well as a host of other fresh produce companies and organisations.

Managing Director of AMFRESH UK, Mark Player, was joined on stage by the supplier’s UK Technical Director Sam Franklin to share the company’s continued forward-thinking investments in innovation to step-change the fresh produce industry.

Meanwhile, AMFRESH Group’s Global Consumer Insights and Analytics Director, Carolina Palomo, gave a wide-ranging presentation exploring ways of driving everyday fruit consumption, reaching younger consumers, effectively marketing fruit as a snack, and making fresh produce enticing and fun for consumers.

Rebecca Britton from Alconbury Weald master developer, Urban&Civic, said: “It was great to see Watch Office Green awash with colour for this amazing Festival of Fresh, busy with representatives from across the sector and around the World.

“The Green has hosted many community events over the years, and it is great to see it being used by an important member of our growing business community at Alconbury Weald, to showcase their innovative new facility here.”

AMFRESH’s brand-new site in Alconbury Weald Campus is located close to its existing MM Flowers facility and is one of the most highly automated fruit-packing facilities in the UK.

The new site is also home to a ground-breaking Innovation Centre, which AMFRESH intends to open up to the wider industry. The Centre will include cutting-edge laboratories and consumer tasting facilities designed to ensure the highest-quality produce with exceptional flavour and organoleptic attributes (that stimulate the senses) as well as extending produce shelf-life in a continued effort to reduce food waste.