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As an industry partner, Alimentaria will use every possible resource to bring together businesspeople from all five continents by means of the International Projects. More than 100 Spanish businesses and 500 foreign buyers will take part in this initiative. Organisers predict that these projects will lead to more than 7,200 business meetings.

Meetings focused on Distribution, Business Cooperation and Innovation and Technology. Such meetings represent the essence of the International Projects, which have been developed by Alimentaria in conjunction with the FIAB (Spanish Federation of Food and Beverage Industries), ICEX (Spanish Foreign Trade Institute), AMEC (Multi-sectorial Business Association) and the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, with the goal of facilitating business contacts between Spain and the rest of the world. The encounters take place as part of a scheduled programme of meetings which allow Spanish representatives to contact foreign businesspeople. Within this framework, organisers expect Alimentaria 2008 to facilitate more than 7,200 business meetings in which 130 Spanish companies and 500 foreign buyers will take part.

Latin America (the Latin America Project), Central and Eastern European Countries (the EU-10 Project), Asia (the Asia Project) and North America (the USA and Canada Project) are the regions that have been invited to participate in these events, which will be attended by hundreds of businesses from nearly every corner of the world.  Executives from major foreign companies such as Wal-Mart (Mexico), Woolworth (Australia), Pesco (Poland), Wild Oats (USA) and Carrefour Argentina participated in the last edition of the projects.

Latin America Project
Companies from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and Uruguay have already confirmed their participation in the fifth edition of the Latin America Project. A veteran among Alimentaria’s International Projects, this initiative is structured around two main components: Business Meetings and the Central American Pavilion.

Asia Project
Following a successful first edition, the Asia Project returns to the International Food and Beverage Exhibition boasting a significant increase in its scope. Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines are just a few of the countries that will be joining the initiative this year, adding their presence of that of China, India, Japan and South Korea. The COPCA office in Tokyo has also become involved in the Asia Project in this edition of Alimentaria with the objective of boosting the number of Japanese buyers at the show.

EU-10 Project
Cyprus, Latvia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Malta, Estonia, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are the countries participating in Alimentaria's EU-10 Project. This initiative seeks to make Spanish exhibitors' products known to importers and distributors from countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

USA and Canada Project
Alimentaria 2008 is turning its attention to two of the richest countries in the world. Exhibitors at the Exhibition will have an exclusive opportunity to establish commercial ties with businesses from the USA and Canada. Organisers of the trade fair have decided to bolster the second edition of the USA and Canada Project by working in close collaboration with the COPCA office (Consortium for the Commercial Promotion of Catalonia) in Los Angeles, with the support of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Miami.

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