This year, Anuga Drinks, one of the ten trade shows at Anuga, will once again offer trade buyers and interested caterers an expert information and ordering platform for beverages. Around 500 exhibitors from 61 countries will be concentrated at Anuga Drinks, including many market-leading companies as well as small and medium-sized suppliers. Anuga Drinks is the only trade show worldwide to cover the complete spectrum of drinks and beverages including non-alcoholic beverages, wine, beer, spirits and trend drinks.

In this way, the fair provides a comprehensive overview of the international competitors in this sector. The suppliers at the fair will include Beijing Huiyuan, Bitburger, Bösch Boden Spies with Chiquita, Citrosuco Fias , Döhler, F.W. Langguth Erben, Gerolsteiner Brunnen, Glockengold Fruchtsaft, Harboes Bryggeri A/S., Nestlé Waters Turkey, Hermann Pfanner, Passina Products B.V., RAUCH Fruchtsäfte GmbH & Co and riha Richard Hartinger (Wesergold).

The special shows will serve as additional highlights. At the Anuga Wine Special, an attractively designed tasting area, Anuga exhibitors will present their numerous wines, which will be skilfully served by the world champion sommelier Markus Del Monego and his team. To date, around 180 wines have been registered for the tasting area. A panel of experts headed by Markus Del Monego will select the best wines from each category and present them with awards.

First-hand information will also be provided at the Anuga Wine Special’s 11 work stations, where the featured wines and vintners will also be presented in pleasant surroundings by skilled sommeliers. The Anuga Wine Special will also be accompanied by specialist presentations, which will provide additional information on wines and their qualities. A special service at the event will be an innovative QR code concept for the wine tasting sessions. The concept was developed by Sommelier-Konsult GmbH especially for Anuga.

Trend Forum Bar will showcase the latest cocktail-related trends. In the midst of the trade fair, skilled bartenders from the Bar Promotion Team will present their creations made with products from the exhibitors. They will also offer interactive workshops which will provide new inspiration for the bar sector.

Beverage producers are focusing on innovation
A human being can only consume about 750 litres of industrially manufactured drinks per year. This is a biological limit that nature has always set the beverage industry. The various drinks segments therefore struggle against each other to win over consumers. One of the major ongoing trends in this area is the steady drop in beer’s popularity in Germany, despite the fact that the country invented the Beer Purity Law.

Mineral water, on the other hand, continues to gain in popularity, and not only due to strict alcohol bans for drivers or at the workplace. It is instead the result of major changes in German society, which have caused many people to become more health conscious than they were just a few decades ago. As a result, the per capita consumption of mineral water in Germany has now reached 131 litres per year, compared to just under 40 litres in 1980.

Over the past few weeks, Germany’s leading mineral water brand Gerolsteiner has tried to provide conclusive proof that mineral water can have a positive impact on consumers’ fitness. Over a period of one month, 6,000 test subjects therefore only drank Gerolsteiner mineral water. An accompanying study, which had been prepared by scientists from the German College for Preventive Healthcare and Health Management (DHFPG), clearly showed that 73 per cent of the participants experienced an improvement in their general well-being, while 61 percent were able to better concentrate after the one-month study and almost half of the test subjects noticed that their athletic performance had improved.

Germans are the world’s leading juice drinkers
Germans are the world’s leading juice drinkers, consuming almost 40 litres per year on average for everyone from babies to the elderly. Germans prefer apple and orange juice to all other types of juice. In the non-alcoholic beverage sector, Germans also consume 118 litres of soft drinks per person each year. The main types of drink in this segment are lemonade and soda. But while cola drinks have been stagnating for some time, the demand for spritzers and low-calorie lemonade has been growing significantly. A steady stream of new flavours has been very successful. In the run-up to Anuga Drinks, some of the manufacturers have revealed which types of fruit are trendy this year. Açai and goji berries will probably rank near the top this year, and they also contain high concentrations of vitamins and antioxidants.

Discounters have now achieved high market shares in all beverage segments. “Although the intense price wars among Germany’s food retailers might be beneficial for consumers over the short term, we will ultimately have to realize that producer innovation and high-quality products have their price,” says Klaus Stadler, President of the German Association for Non-Alcoholic Beverages (wafg).

The drinks market is changing
Experts in consumer research have noticed that the German beverage market has greatly changed in recent years. The top winners were energy drinks, vodka and ready-mixed beer drinks. The biggest losers were Alt-type beers and sweet wines. Major manufacturers responded to this development by making acquisitions. The US beverage giant Coca-Cola, for example, bought up the time-honoured mineral water brand Apollinaris and also created the new brand Vio in order to benefit from the market for still, non-carbonated mineral water, which continues to grow rapidly.

Medium-sized manufacturers of brand-name products are primarily responding to the requirements of the beverage market with innovations. Zero-calorie drinks are an example of this as are near-water products and sports drinks. The family-owned company Vilsa Brunnen, which claims to be the market-leading supplier of soft drinks in northern Germany, has, for example, added wellness drinks to its product range as well as a classy gourmet line.

Most mineral water producers have recognized that mineral water perfectly supplements good food and fine wine. The cooperation with a regional mineral water producer often creates a win-win situation for many vinery operators, because today’s vintners have to offer more than just good quality. Many vintners are also focusing on exports — with surprisingly good results. German wines enjoy an especially good reputation in the USA, Scandinavia, Russia and Japan. German wines are also doing very well in China, where sales increased by 35 per cent and turnover by 17 per cent last year.

The German spirits industry is also increasingly focusing on promoting sales abroad. Whereas the consumption of spirits has stagnated in Germany for many years at 5.4 litres per capita, the number of bottles sold abroad rose by almost 13 per cent last year, from 212 million bottles to 239 million. German spirits are especially popular in the USA, the UK and the Benelux countries.

By contrast, many big German breweries export beer only to holiday locations in the Mediterranean, while they are continuing to intensify their efforts to win over consumers in their home market. But in view of the fact that the German beer market has been contracting for several years so that the per capita beer consumption has now dropped to just over 107 litres per year, only the especially creative among the more than 1,500 German breweries will survive. All of the companies should have shandy, mixed beer drinks featuring innovative flavours, and non-alcoholic beers in their product ranges by now.

Anuga will take place from Saturday, 8th October, to Wednesday, 12th October 2011. It is open to trade visitors only.

More information on Anuga is available at: www.anuga.com