Anuga FoodTec

From the milkman’s doorstep delivery to aseptic packaging: every era has redefined dairy. 🥛

In the early 1900s, a glass bottle on your doorstep was cutting-edge supply chain logistics. Daily routes, unrefrigerated delivery, raw product — the entire cold chain was the milkman himself.

Then came pasteurization at industrial scale. Then the waxed paper carton. Then Tetra Pak's aseptic Brik in 1963 — arguably one of the most consequential packaging innovations in food history. Shelf life went from hours to months. Distribution economics changed overnight.

Today, the conversation has shifted again. Mono-material sealing, energy-reduced UHT processes, inline quality inspection, and closed-loop water systems are rewriting what "efficient milk production" means — this time with an ESG mandate attached.

The product is the same. The complexity behind it has never been greater.

At Anuga FoodTec 2027, the full technology chain behind liquid food processing — from gentle thermal treatment to sustainable filling and packaging — will be on the floor in Cologne.

February 23–26, 2027. Koelnmesse.

In beverage production, speed is no longer the competitive advantage. Adaptability is.

Beverage lines used to be built around a single product. One formula, one format, one process.

That model is giving way to something fundamentally different.

"Aseptic has long since begun to impact more than only the filler," says Roland Thiemann, Director of Anuga FoodTec. For him, economic efficiency and process security depend on the full chain — sterilisation, stretch blowing, bottle handling, filling and sealing — functioning as one integrated system.

The evidence is tangible. 🔬 Modern aseptic PET lines integrate these steps into continuous sterile process chains, handling format changes in under 30 minutes. Inline dosing systems add heat-sensitive ingredients post-pasteurisation, protecting what thermal processes would otherwise degrade.

Non-thermal technologies are gaining ground alongside: HPP at up to 6,000 bar, no heat, no preservatives. Pulsed Electric Fields for targeted cell processing. Both expanding what is achievable in clean-label formulation and product safety. ⚙️

Anuga FoodTec 2027 maps this shift — across the full process chain.

📍 Cologne, February 23–26, 2027

Modern food safety requires more than quality control. It requires intelligence across the entire value chain.

5,350 alerts through the RASFF - the EU Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed - in 2024. Germany alone: over 1,000 reports, one in four classified as serious risk.

Pesticide residues, salmonella, mould toxins - most entering through global supply chains, most detected after the fact.

The structural gap is data architecture. Machine performance data, quality records and supply chain information held in separate systems. Those silos keep risk management reactive.

At the process level, JBT Marel AI-supported monitoring compares real-time machine data to historical patterns - catching deviations before they produce failures. At the chain level, CSB-System ERP-integrated tracing follows raw materials batch-precise through every processing step, enabling a simulated full product recall in minutes, not days.

NIS 2 adds pressure. Food production is now critical infrastructure - companies with 50+ employees face mandatory cybersecurity obligations. The compliance perimeter now extends into the digital layer.

From inline analytics and AI-supported quality control to integrated hygiene, prevention and IT security concepts - Anuga FoodTec 2027 shows how holistic safety approaches protect food production.

Research contributed by DLG e.V.

The most valuable insights often emerge from conversations, not presentations.

Anuga FoodTec 2027 is introducing the Community Hub SMART — a dedicated arena for exchange, collaboration and hands-on engagement with the technologies driving digital transformation in food and beverage production.

Content conception is led by DLG e.V. - German Agricultural Society, anchoring the programme in four areas of active industry development:

🤖 Robotics & automation
🧠 Artificial intelligence
🔗 Digitalisation & digital twins
🔒 Cyber security

The format mix reflects how the sector actually learns:

👾 Tech Talks for compact, practice-oriented technology insights
🗣️ Fishbowl discussions where the audience shapes the conversation
🫵🏻 BarCamp sessions where participants co-author the agenda
🎤 Live Showcases presenting partner technologies in direct production context

The scope runs the full value chain — from raw materials management through production to intralogistics.

Cologne. 23–26 February 2027.

"Innovations on the shopfloor only work if safety is considered from the outset."

That line from Carola K. Herbst, Deputy Managing Director at the DLG Centre for Agriculture and Food, lands differently once you've seen what a production network looks like after a breach.

The incident is not an outlier. As the AFT press team noted ahead of Anuga FoodTec 2027: "Cyber risks no longer affect only classic office IT." Networked processing and packaging lines, cloud-connected quality systems, remote service access — every integration point is a potential entry point.

The structural challenge is well understood: legacy OT environments were designed for isolation. Today most of them are not isolated. Asset discovery, network segmentation, anomaly monitoring, and Zero Trust access — the principle that no device or user is automatically trusted — are now the baseline, not the advanced tier.

NIS-2 sets the regulatory floor across the EU. IEC 62443 defines the technical benchmark for machine and system security. The gap between where most food manufacturers stand and where these frameworks require them to be is where production risk lives.

Anuga FoodTec 2027 addresses this directly. The Smart Hub at Koelnmesse brings together OT security specialists, automation providers and food manufacturers — turning digital production resilience into operational reality.

Navigate Complexity. Smart. Safe. Sustainable.
📌 Cologne, February 23–26, 2027.