It’s Time Again for FA&M!
It’s time once again for FOOD ENGINEERING’s Food Automation & Manufacturing Symposium and Expo!
If you feel like you’ve read an editor’s note like this recently or, better yet, feel like you were just at the show, you wouldn’t be wrong. The event was annually held in the spring, until COVID forced us to move it to the fall. It remained in the fall for a few years, but we always knew we wanted it back in the spring. The problem was that it meant we’d have to do a short cycle between shows.
Well, we finally made the switch. As we announced in September at the end of last year’s FA&M, the 2024 event is going to once again be in Bonita Springs, Fla., at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point from April 7-9.
I say this every time, but we have a great lineup for this year’s FA&M, which will have a primary focus on sustainability. Automation Alley’s CEO, Tom Kelly, is our keynote this year, and he’ll be sharing his thoughts on using AI to navigate sustainability efforts.
For those of you who like case studies, FA&M attendees will be the first to get the full walkthrough of this year’s Plant of the Year winner, JBS Prepared Foods’ Principe facility, and our Sustainable Plant of the Year winner, Meati Foods’ Mega Ranch. And what did Taylor Farms do when the facility they were moving into burned down? It was no big deal, they just built another plant on the site prior to the harvest. This year's FA&M attendees will be among the first to hear how they did it and get on-the-spot answers for questions aimed at our speakers.
I know I’m biased, but it’s my favorite show of the year. I always look forward to it even though I have to get up on stage and speak. But FA&M makes it so much easier to pick the brains of experts than other shows. The contacts I make there tend to be the people I reach out to as sources for stories because I’ve had the time to develop a good connection.
If you haven’t already, learn more about the show here: https://www.foodengineeringmag.com/food-automation-symposium. Hope to see you next month! FE
Cheers,
Derrick