The motto for this years Innovation Food Conference, run by the German Institute for Food Technology and being held during Anuga for the second time (9 October 2017), is Discovering megatrends in food.

New concepts at this years Anuga exhibition in October will include a separate trade fair for tea and coffee, known as Anuga Hot Beverages, and an expanded Culinary Concepts sector for technology, equipment and gastronomy. once again, the Anuga Trend Zone will be run jointly with Innova Market Insights, giving food and product trends. The Taste Innovation competition for new products is open until 13 September for exhibitors to enter, which are then judged and presented at a special event during Anuga (7-11 October 2017, Cologne, Germany).

Other special events include the Olive Oil Market with an associated olive oil congress; the Executive Summit; finals of the Chef of the Year and Patissier of the Year competitions; Power Breakfast lecture programme for foodservice professionals. Featured trends will be sustainable products, convenience, digitalisation, clean label, reduction and more green.

Brexit is expected to be a strong talking point at the show. EU statistics showed that in 2015 Great Britain imported agriculture and food goods worth €39 billion in 2015. In return, the country exported goods to Europe to the value of €16 billion. German research institute, Thünen Institute, has predicted that the German meat and dairy industries would be the most severely affected if customs duties were introduced post Brexit, with the German trade surplus declining by around €700 million.

Overall, Anuga covers 284,000 square metres of exhibition space in 11 halls. It has almost 7,200 exhibitors from 100 countries, and around 160,000 visitors. 89% of the exhibitors and 69% of visitors come from abroad.