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SANA RESTARTS WITH SANA FOOD: SCHEDULED AT BOLOGNAFIERE FROM 23 TO 25 FEBRUARY 2025 A NEW FORMAT FOR HORECA AND SPECIALISED RETAIL

SANA Food comes from SANA, the fair that for 35 years has been focusing on organic and natural products.
The new Exhibition will engage the whole world of healthy food in the eating-out-of-home segment.
It will be held concurrently with Slow Wine Fair, the international fair dedicated to good, clean and fair wine.
The Early Bird campaign is running until 12 July, allowing exhibitors to benefit from special rates.

Bologna, 25 June 2024 – The year 2025 marks a turning point for SANA, the Event that, over the last 35 years, has been one of the main shows for organic and natural products. At its 36th edition, scheduled at BolognaFiere from 23 to 25 February, SANA will turn into the new format SANA Food, the concept dedicated to the world of healthy eating and the highly topical, socially and environmentally relevant issues involved in this matter.
Focusing on the importance of ethical and sustainable management of resources, of quality production chains and the land, SANA Food will give visibility to companies that turn these principles, already deeply rooted in the organic field and now increasingly widespread, into virtuous practices.
Driving the turnaround at SANA is the evolution observed in trends, especially in out-of-home consumption, which is not only embracing organic products to an increasingly significant degree, but also registering a surge in demand for nutritional options that are healthier and more sustainable for the planet, more innovative and, at the same time, respectful of local traditions.

As Claudia Castello, Exhibition Manager of SANA Food, explains, «the new format offers Food Service and Horeca companies the most useful out-of-home eating solutions to better tune in with the needs of consumers who are increasingly attentive to the origin of what they are buying and oriented towards healthy, sustainable and quality products: three concepts that SANA Food, while assigning a central role to organic products, extends to the whole world of healthy food with a controlled supply chain and medium-small production volumes. We will then be presenting biodynamic, vegetarian, plant-based, ‘free from’ products for allergy and intolerance sufferers and those who follow special diets, ‘enriched’ and ‘lightened’ products – including foods for athletes, senior citizens and children, PDO, PGI and TSG products».

One of the innovations at SANA Food, the “Healthy 100 Days Project“, will help define more precisely the features of those who choose these types of products. The Project is developed in collaboration with LightUp Italia! and Toluna Corporate, the community of seventy million consumers in over seventy countries whose opinions play a part in the marketing choices of consumer-oriented companies. Through a dynamic survey, the new community expressly created for SANA Food – 3,000 Italian and 1,000 Danish consumers – will be observed and analysed for two intervals of 100 days each; during this time, they will share their opinions, ideas, suggestions, behaviours and out-of-home consumption choices regarding the concept of a ‘healthy’ lifestyle. The results will gradually be released through social media channels and the SANA website, and during the Event with debates, and they will form the first building block of a consumer survey, the first ever carried out in Italy, to dialogue directly with consumers and interpret market trends.

«Our trade fair – Claudia Castello continues – will welcome manufacturers and professionals in the sector, inviting them to reflect on the importance of ethical resource management, to promote a culture of informed, responsible and sustainable purchasing, and to support a market that rewards these values».

The concurrence of the Event with the fourth edition of Slow Wine Fair, the international fair dedicated to good, clean and fair wine, will enrich SANA Food’s exhibition proposal. Slow Wine Fair is organised by BolognaFiere, based on an idea conceived together with Slow Food, and SANA Food shares with it the underlying inspiration and the target visitor from the Horeca channel.
Exhibitors will gain greater visibility and more opportunities to increase their business, while the distribution professionals to whom SANA Food is addressed – profiled targets representing hotels, restaurants, bars and catering, specialised shops, delicatessens and cash&carry – will be able to adapt to their market’s new trends.

Taking advantage of the Early Bird campaign (deadline 12 July) will allow exhibitors to access attractive rates; more information at sana.it.

One asset of SANA Food is represented by the strong focus on business networking, which will be achieved thanks to the business lounge, a special reserved area dedicated to b2b meetings between exhibitors and international buyers.

Rivoluzione Bio, the conference bringing together the main stakeholders of the organic market, will be again proposed, with in-depth discussions and debates on the priority issues for institutions, investors and opinion leaders in the organic sector. On this occasion the SANA Survey 2025 will be presented, a collection of the latest market data curated by Nomisma. Rivoluzione Bio is organized and promoted by BolognaFiere in collaboration with FederBio as part of the BEING ORGANIC IN EU project, managed by FederBio in partnership with Naturland DE and co-financed by the EU under EU Reg. no. 1144/2014.

The long-awaited SANA Food Novità section returns both in the exhibition area at the fair and in the online guide: a qualified showcase of new products and extensions of existing lines, new formulations and changes to ingredients and new types of packaging.

SANA Food will once again focus on two precise moments of consumption. Breakfast will be developed through scientific meetings facing the importance of eating healthily right from the morning, and through cooking demos aimed at Horeca professionals who want to offer healthy, balanced and innovative breakfasts. The Organic Aperitif@SANA2025 area of SANA Food will introduce operators to the trends in the sector and offer tastings of the exhibitors’ products which are better suited to an all-healthy aperitif, prepared for the occasion by professional bartenders.

Thanks to the cooperation with V Label Italia, SANA Food will put the dynamic vegan and vegetarian market segment at the centre of a third focus area, where experts in the sector will be running training activities – aimed in particular at the Horeca –, with professional courses ranging from the delicate topic of cross contamination to ingredients derived from new vegetable proteins, and will provide examples of traditional (and non-traditional) recipes in vegan or vegetarian versions, easy to include in the menus of hotels, restaurants and bars. V Label Italia will also present international innovations related to the veg lifestyle.

The busy calendar of Cooking Shows and Masterclasses planned at SANA Food will be the highlight of an articulated educational programme, starting well in advance of the exhibition, promoted by Lab Academy SANA Food.
The Lab Academy is one of the leading innovations at the Show and will organise seminars, meetings and demonstrations with a high educational and refresher content for operators. These periodic appointments will focus on the themes that mark the new course of SANA Food, from the most current consumer trends to the apparent schizophrenia of the markets, where enriched and depleted products coexist on the same shelf, up to the silver generation food proposals – driving force of the new economy, with completely different needs from those of a few years ago – and nutraceutical products, for those pursuing ‘beauty from inside’. At the beginning of October, for example, a training event will focus on the ever-expanding world of free-from, which will be investigated with a technical-scientific approach that is attentive both to best practices and business.
The Lab Academy SANA Food will benefit from the collaboration of, among others, companies and trade associations, and will be coordinated by Professor Sebastiano Porretta, President of the Italian Association of Food Technology (AITA), author of several books on themes related to food and nutrition, and one of the best-known professional figures in the sector.

In its role as a start-up intending to bring together the best realities of the Horeca universe, SANA Food will soon be joined by other partners, united by their ability to catch the new contemporary language towards which catering is moving.

SANA Food is organised by BolognaFiere in collaboration with FederBio, with the patronage of the Emilia-Romagna Region and the Municipality of Bologna, and the support of ITA – Italian Trade Agency.

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NEW EXHIBITIONS PLATFORMS FOR NEW BUSINESS AND CONSUMER NEEDS

Market data confirm consumer interest in organic products. What is changing are choices, methods and purchasing channels, with a concomitant evolution of the exhibition proposal by BolognaFiere, declined in the SANA Food and SANA Beauty formulas.

Nuremberg, 14 February 2024 – The recent snapshot taken by Nomisma on the consumption of organic products in Italy tells of a market in evident transformation. Carried out as part of the Being Organic in Eu project promoted by FederBio in collaboration with Naturland and co-financed by the European Union pursuant to EU Reg. n.1144/2014, the survey shows how organic products maintain a key role in the agrifood supply chain and in consumer preferences, so much so that the Italian domestic market will exceed 5.4 billion euros in 2023 (+18% compared to 2022). These figures, however, are part of a framework of increasing attention to spending and a growing orientation towards sustainable choices, attentive to the healthiness of products and their origin.

An evolution in consumption and sector trends that will translate into a new concept of trade fair event, moving from a product fair to a channel fair: BolognaFiere – one of the leading operators on the world trade fair scene – has already adopted this approach with MARCA by BolognaFiere, where more than 250 organic companies exhibit each year, mainly interested in the large-scale retail segment and who find their most suitable visitor in this event. Similarly, BolognaFiere will organise SANA, the International Exhibition of Organic and Natural Products, offering its client companies profiled targets of visitors from the specialised sector, Ho.Re.Ca and Food Service, with the aim of helping them consolidate and expand their business areas, identifying the most appropriate trade fair platforms from time to time.

«The decision to focus on channel fairs, rather than a single product fair, stems from the need to intercept the different targets of interest for companies in a more targeted manner. SANA – which in recent years has embarked on a significant journey of transformation, at the same time fostering dialogue and collaboration between producers and buyers in the sector – has been able and willing to listen to the market and its protagonists, and this is why, starting in 2025, it will offer them separate exhibition platforms, divided by product sector and channel,» says Domenico Lunghi, Director of Exhibitions Direct of BolognaFiere.

THE BOLOGNAFIERE PROPOSAL, FROM SANA TO COSMOPROF WORLDWIDE

A forerunner of trends in the world of organic and natural consumption, strong in its 35 years of experience and listening to the needs of its companies, from 2025 SANA will be developed within two specific events.

SANA Food, from 23 to 25 February 2025, organised in collaboration with FederBio, presenting itself at the same time as Slow Wine Fair, will become the ideal space for sector trends in organic and sustainable food.
In addition to hosting the initiatives and in-depth discussions promoted by the Being Organic in Eu project, SANA Food will provide trade visitors with a wide range of organic, healthy and sustainable food, together with good, fair and clean wine. An all-round proposal that will allow the world of Ho.re.ca, specialised shops (but also distribution), to meet an Italian and international production structure based on ethics of production, work and the environment, and of course on quality.

SANA Beauty, on the other hand, will take place in March, simultaneously and integrated with Cosmoprof Worldwide, in a hall dedicated to the world of natural and organic cosmetics. Flanked by its historic partner, Gruppo Cosmetici a connotazione Naturale ed Erboristica di Cosmetica Italia-Associazione nazionale imprese cosmetiche, SANA Beauty will enrich the exhibition offering by consolidating the classic visitation of herbalist shops with the target of green cosmetics, creating new international opportunities for exhibitors, thanks to the expertise of Cosmoprof Wordlwide, which will promote and co-organise the event.
The world of personal care with natural, organic and sustainable products will be particularly well represented in the 2025 edition with specific business areas and identified paths of all the companies with a natural connotation present at the event.

«In a constantly evolving market, it is crucial for companies and buyers to stay up-to-date with the latest trends. Although declined on different platforms, SANA will continue to be a unique opportunity for training and information, but also an essential moment to discover and present the most innovative solutions by companies producing healthy, green organic and natural products,» concludes Domenico Lunghi.

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