Winners and Sharks dominate day two of the GFSI Conference

A packed agenda for Greenfence on the second day of the world’s biggest food safety conference.

Global Markets Awards

The morning saw the hotly anticipated Global Markets Awards ceremony which Greenfence has sponsored since the awards’ inception some four years ago.  The awards recognise ‘small but ambitious’ companies that leverage the GFSI Global Markets Programme. Representatives from three of the four winning companies — Luna Export (Ethiopia), Alacor (Argentina) and Linya Smaku (Ukraine) — took the stage to receive their awards from Greenfence CEO & Founder Mitch Chait and GFSI Chair Mike Robach. The fourth winner, Shanghai Mcvolf Food Co. (China), was represented in proxy by a GFSI representative.

Speaking at the awards, Mitch Chait said, “For Greenfence, this is more than just a financial undertaking.  It is about advancing the GFSI message and food safety globally.  GFSI is a platform that can truly change the world; food safety is imperative but there is a whole commercial aspect to this.  Against the backdrop of increasing regulatory landscapes and 5G and the IoT, companies will need certification in order to deliver them with market access.”

Read more about the four winning companies here.

Food safety insight and digital wallets dominate GFSI Village

The Greenfence Booth continued to be one of the key areas of focus in the GFSI Village.  Delegates were eager to download their GPR Alerts^TM digital wallet, which delivered a gift redeemable at the GFSI Official Dinner (which Greenfence also sponsors). In addition, interviews with some of the world’s leading food safety professionals   continued and you can expect to see more of this content over the coming weeks.

Shark Tank

For the first time at a GFSI Conference, the breakouts linked to the Plenary 5 technology session took the form of an interactive pitch contest, à la the popular programme Shark Tank. In three concurrent sessions, Greenfence’s Petra Wissenburg moderated the Product Solutions session where three innovators presented their product solutions – a ‘common language of food’ from TeakOrigin, the ‘lab in a box’ from IEH Laboratories or ‘nature’s barcode – DNA itself’ from IdentiGEN.

Each pitch was followed by 12 minutes of clarifying questions from the sharks, complete with a count-down clock. The winning presenter, chosen by audience votes, will be announced during the closing plenary on Friday.

Networking at the Fremont Foundry

As the day drew to a close, delegates crossed Lake Washington to gather at the Fremont Foundry for this year’s official reception and dinner, again sponsored by Greenfence. Once a hub for Seattle’s groundbreaking artist community, the venue was alive with a new kind of creativity as delegates made connections, traded ideas and prove GFSI’s status as ‘the world’s biggest conversation for food safety’.