Exclusive: World Confectionery Conference 2025 Ferrero launch interview

The World Confectionery Conference has continued to make its mark on the global industry, tackling major issues surrounding the sector’s sustainability, innovation and policy. Editor Neill Barston speaks to Ferrero’s Francesco Tramontin on the prospects for its Belgian return to Brussels for our 2025 event.

In the wake of our 90th anniversary in publishing, the World Confectionery Conference is set to make a significant return to Brussels for its fifth occasion, being staged this autumn.

With the sector experiencing a period of major changes as it moves to meet rapidly shifting market demands, our industry gathering is due to make a keenly anticipated call upon the Belgian capital on 11 September.

Moreover, our 2025 show revisits its debut venue of the Marriott Hotel in Grand Place Brussels, which has recently undergone a striking refurbishment. This distinguished location lies at the heart of the Belgian capital, which remains a core confectionery hub, renowned for its high quality confectionery.

World Confectionery Conference Brussels – 12 September 2024

 

It has previously set a vibrant tone for our shows, which highlight innovation across new confectionery product development, equipment, technology, systems and ingredients that are collectively shaping our global industry.

From sustainability and delivering against supply chain challenges, and how to integrate AI into the market, through to wider sector product and manufacturing trends, we are setting out to engage the industry’s complete value chain. Significantly, as a founding partner of our event, Caobisco, the leading European industry trade body, has confirmed it will once again return to play its part for our event this year.

Caobisco European confectionery body, led by its president Can Buharali, pictured opening the 2024 World Confectionery Conference) has joined key groups in calling for EUDR guidelines to be released. Pic: Dafos

In addition, Ferrero, which has also backed our conference since its inception, is among core companies returning for 2025, as registration opens for our must-attend event at confectioneryconference.com Speaking exclusively to our title, Francesco Tramontin, the Italian-founded firm’s vice president of EU institutional relations and group public policy, reflected on our 2024 show, and looked ahead to our plans for later this year.

“I’ve enjoyed being part of the conference with its diversity of stakeholders, and what we did for the most recent event, where we featured our global president for Nutella speaking about its 60th anniversary and the new vegan variety, which felt fresh.

“The World Confectionery Conference was a great event for 2024. It covered various angles, from the more technical to areas that are more general, as well as covering issues and policy, so it is good that it has been held in Brussels, where there has been so much happening,” said the senior Ferrero executive, who confirmed that the business is continuing to make strides in terms of its wider engagement with the industry.

Francesco Tramontin, was one of two speakers representing Ferrero at the World Confectionery Conference. Pic: Neill Barston

He observed that the company has keenly valued delivering on sustainability. As we recently reported from Ferrero’s corporate headquarters in Luxembourg, the business has placed a strong emphasis on playing a leading role in steering the confectionery sector’s approach to major issues of tackling deforestation, as well as its social responsibilities in addressing headline urgent topics of child labour and support for communities within vital cocoa supply chains.

On the latter issue, the much-debated EUDR laws that have now been adopted, have been pushed back to a renewed start date at the end of 2025. These aim to ensure companies are directly accountable over ensuring zero forest loss in their supply chains. The frameworks are also linked to greater human rights due diligence legislation, designed to bring greater balance and transparency across industries.

It’s a subject that is particularly close to Francesco in his public policy role, and he appears upbeat that despite a setback to the timing of its delivery, that the EUDR will in fact make a difference. “The one-year delay to the legislation has now been approved without any substantive changes. It is something that we truly welcome in the sense we really did not want any alterations to it, as we have been a proponent of it since it was adopted over 18 months ago.

“We are working towards compliance with it from the beginning of 2025 as we always had been, so any changes to it at this stage could have undermined the work that had been done on it already, so we are glad that most of the member states have supported it,” adding the one year delay proposed by the EU Commission was on balance fair given the additional time needed for countries to adapt to its demands.

World Confectionery Conference Brussels – 12 September 2024. Pic: Dafos Photography

He considered that a strong spirit of collaboration will be required across industries and nations to ensure that its goals of greater transparency, accountability and creating a greater level playing field between supplying nations and European countries that have the largest share of processing and manufacturing operations. “I think the two elements of traceability and due diligence is the right way for sourcing products.

In the end, this is what supply chains are built on, so there needs to be the right rewards for those farmers across that chain. They will need to be helped in how to comply with the new regulations, which will have challenges, and policies will need to be fine-tuned around this,” explained Francesco.

He added that parallel laws specifically on corporate due diligence linked to EUDR, which are also going through the EU Parliament will be of equal importance, that benefits everyone across the industry. But he felt that strong progress is now being made across these vital topics (watch our recent exclusive video interview with Francesco below).

World Confectionery Awards
Confectionery Conference on 11 September in Brussels, will also host our latest World Confectionery Awards, celebrating the achievements of equipment, ingredients and finished product businesses from around the globe, as well as emerging companies.

Andy Baxendale claims an award for Sweetdreams Ltd for our 2024 event. Pic: Dafos Photography

Honours will be presented in the afternoon of the conference at the Marriott Grand Place hotel, and as in previous years, we will be championing sustainability, innovation and technical excellence across the sector. Our accolades will be judged by our publication’s highly experienced editorial board.

fter its successful introduction in 2024, we will be reviving the Emerging Enterprise of the year honours (for companies no more than 3-5 years in age from right across our complete sector). The category will be alongside awards specifically for supplier innovations across equipment, ingredients and finished product market segments, plus further accolades for the sustainability initiative of 2025, and team contribution of the year.

Luker Chocolate were victorious in the sustainability category for 2024. Pic: Dafos

Entering the awards will be free (via our dedicated website confectioneryconference.com , with previous winners having been decided from right across the full spectrum of the industry, from small independents, to major corporations. Each business will be allowed to nominate a maximum of one company innovation into each of these categories, and we welcome entries from around the world. It’s your chance to see your business recognised by the industry, and this has become a popular and engaging part of our conference, so don’t miss the chance to participate.

We will be encouraging companies to send entries until 20 July, which will once again be done via the World Confectionery Conference website at confectioneryconference.com/awards Entries should include a description of why you believe the nominated company should receive an accolade, which should be a minimum of 200 words, but no more than 500 words. Each entry should describe how you feel your business has made a notable impact in the past year.

Editor Neill Barston commented: “Our 2025 event comes at an especially crucial period for the industry, with major legislation on the horizon with the EUDR regulations and broader due diligence laws coming into lend greater protections for key cocoa supply chains, continuing inflationary test, as well as major technology innovations in the form of AI and robotics, as well as ingredients advances, that are helping transform our global industry. All these core subjects are set to come under the microscope as we make a fresh return to Brussels.”

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