Trade fair visits possible again at long last

No gain without pain

After attending the Chocoa trade fair in February 2020, coronavirus put a stop to international trade fairs and restricted international travel and customer visits. For almost two years, we were forced to have meetings, do machine demonstrations and simulate customer visits via Zoom, Skype and other online communication tools. Although tense times for us - Lareka has an international focus (98% of sales are outside the Netherlands) - our committed employees and agents, good products and great versatility enabled us to come out stronger on the other side.

Sunshine after the storm

That’s true too. In recent months, the Lareka team and its agents (Tomric and Paris Bakery) have been able to attend various trade fairs and participated in a number of them too. The Lareka ‘trade fair season’ kicked off in Aachen, Germany, where it took part in the ‘von der Bohne bis zur verkauften Tafel’ chocolate event. Together with our French agents (Paris Bakery), we participated in Sirha, “the global meeting place for hotels, restaurants, catering and gastronomy” in Lyon, France. We attended Salon du Chocolat with our French reinforcements as well. Tomric, our exclusive supplier of Lareka machines in North America, has also taken part in two trade fairs recently: the Packexpo and the MJBizCon, both in Las Vegas, in the United States.

What’s next?

Lareka’s next trade fair is the ProSweets trade fair in Cologne, Germany. Its organisers say that it is a must for every company in the sweets and snacks industry. We are also set to present our machines at the Chocoa in Amsterdam’s famous Beurs van Berlage building.

We steam ahead in good times and bad and are always positive. So, we are relying on the various trade fairs going ahead ‘as normal’, perhaps with some extra measures. Lareka will present one or more machines at both of the trade fairs above. The team is keen to get started and we’ll have the coffee ready - so, make sure you come along!