The Sri Lanka Export Development Board in collaboration with the Sri Lanka Embassy in Belgium organized Sri Lanka’s participation at the 22nd Annual European Seafood Exposition, “Seafood Expo Global” (formerly the European Seafood Exposition), held at the Parc des Expositions de Bruxelles (BRUSSELS EXPO), Belgium from 06th to 08th May 2014.
The exhibition coincided with the “Seafood Processing Global” (formerly the Seafood Processing Europe) exposition to promote machinery and equipment relating to fisheries industry.
This year’s exposition marks the 22nd edition of Seafood Expo Global, and the 16th edition of Seafood Processing Global. The two exhibitions created the world’s leading event for the seafood industry, which hosted over 1,690 exhibiting companies and attracted more than 25,800 buyers and suppliers.
Seafood Expo Global and Seafood Processing Global is the platform where seafood buyers and sellers come and meet to do business on a global scale, as well as discover new seafood products, new technologies and new trends within this industry. The exposition is therefore considered a unique opportunity for the global seafood industry to come together and make valuable business connections.
This time, around 76 exhibiting countries represented an exhibit space of more than 34,800m2, participated in the annual exposition to present their seafood products, services or processing equipment. From Argentina to Yemen, 71 national and regional country pavilions came from all parts of the world, including new national pavilions from Libya and Japan.
The Sri Lanka Pavilion, which accommodated five reputed Sri Lankan Seafood export companies exhibiting a range of products including processed seafood, was ceremonially opened on 06th May 2014 by Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Belgium & Luxembourg and the European Union P. M. Amza,.
Sri Lanka has continuously participated in this event since 2005. The main objective of Sri Lanka’s participation is to strengthen relationship with existing buyers and look for more export opportunities with new buyers. This time, the companies received access to a one-stop resource to reach out to global retail, food service and wholesale companies around the world. Technological advancements in the industry and value addition aspects exhibited at the event have been useful to Sri Lankan exporters in order to strengthen their competitiveness in a highly price sensitive and regulated markets.
All the companies were able to establish valuable business contacts and links while meeting their existing buyers. It was reported that initial new orders secured by the participants is substantial and further negotiations are under way to finalise orders from the buyers that they met during the fair.
