State of Industry 2024 offers hope for the world’s largest confectionery market
John Downs at SOTIC 2024. Pic: Neill Barston
This week’s blog takes the form of a simple thanks to everyone we encountered at this year’s State of the Industry Conference in Miami, which has proved an especially memorable few days.
As we have covered, the show encompassed everything from inspiring keynotes, through to special guests from outside of the confectionery sector that helped make it particularly notable (see our exclusive video review of the SOTIC 2024 event here).
Significantly, the headline statistic of $48 billion sales for the US market tin the past year, which is up by a total of $6 billion is especially impressive given that there has been a strong level of turbulence within supply chains and input costs in terms of ingredients within the past year.
From speaking to John Downs, CEO and president of the National Confectioners Association, which is behind the event, there’s a real sense of determination within the organisation and its members that they will endure some of its core challenges this year..
Among the most pressing of items is in hoping for some resolution within the US sugar programme, aiming to help bring prices for the core ingredient down to a more acceptable level. The same also goes for cocoa supplies, as the ingredient has doubled in price during the past year alone.
These topics and many others besides were on the agenda for this week’s event in Miami, which did not hold back from discussing these core major items for the US market, which has been impacted amid results from the latest State of Treating Report that showed a weakening level of demand from consumers whose budgets have reduced.
Despite such factors, from speaking to a number of attendees at the event, there was a commendable sense of optimism across differing segments of the industry that events would eventually stabilise within the industry, which is certainly encouraging to hear, that the world’s largest single confectionery market is very much alive and well.
Neill Barston, editor, Confectionery Production
-keep in touch at [email protected] or social media @confectioprod or our LinkedIn pages
