One of Marel’s key ways of reaching its customers and meeting them face-to-face has been the increasingly popular ShowHows that have been held in Copenhagen, with both whitefish and salmon events held every year.
“At the ShowHow events we can demonstrate our equipment running as it would be in a factory,” said Marel’s Michael Hjortshøj.
Now the pandemic has put these on hold for the moment and Marel has been looking for other ways of shining a spotlight on its innovations. This month a digital ShowHow is being held instead, and Marel has already learned from an early venture into virtual events.
“We already held a virtual event instead of the Seafood Processing Global exhibition in Brussels in the spring, and we learned a lot from that about the optimum time and how much detail to go into. A 45 minute session with a QandA seems to be the right length of time, and long enough to go into technical detail,” he explained.
“This year’s Whitefish ShowHow takes place on 21st and 22nd October, with two sessions each day and these are planned to be largely the same, but scheduled for different time zones around the world so that everyone has an opportunity to join in.”
He commented that despite the pandemic and the associated disruption, the seafood business remains busy – although things have changed.
“We’re seeing our customers switching to more production for the retail market instead of for restaurants and hotels. There’s also a serious growth in land-based salmon farming projects and of course we’re watching that carefully,” he said.
Marel has been a presence at exhibitions around the world for many years – and the Icelandic Fisheries Exhibition has a special place among these.
“It’s vital for us to innovate and help our customers get to the next level. Much of our newest and latest innovation in whitefish goes first to the Icelandic industry, and we have close relationships with fishing companies in Iceland,” he said.
“We had planned to be at this year’s IceFish, and we will be there for the rescheduled exhibition in 2021.”
If you are interested in exhibiting, sponsoring, attending or speaking at 2021 IceFish please call +44 01329 825 335 or email info@icefish.is.
International sales:
Diane Lillo Tel. +44 1329 825 335 or email dlillo@mercatormedia.com
Icelandic sales:
Birgir Þór Jósafatsson Tel: +354 896 2277 birgir@icefish.is or Bjarni Thor Jonsson GSM: +354 896 6363 bjarni@icefish.is
