What's happening at foodpro 2026 so far — and why manufacturers, wholesalers, packagers and consultants keep finding their way to Booth J35
foodpro 2026 is underway at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, and after a three-year gap, the industry has shown up in force. More than 400 exhibitors, an expected 9,000-plus industry professionals, and — for the first time — the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology Convention running alongside the exhibition floor for all four days.
This is not a quiet trade show. It is the one week of the year where Australia's food and beverage manufacturing sector stops, compares notes, and decides where to invest next.
Here is what has unfolded so far — and what we are hearing at Booth J35.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED SO FAR
A packed opening, and a program built to last the week
foodpro 2026 officially opened on Sunday 26 July with a ribbon-cutting ceremony led by the Hon. Colin Brooks MP, Victorian Minister for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing — a signal of how seriously food manufacturing is treated as an economic priority in this state. The opening night Industry Connect Evening at Melbourne Public, on the Yarra River, set the tone: informal, high-density networking between exhibitors and visitors before a single stand was properly explored.
| Milestone | Detail |
| Official opening | Opened Sunday 26 July by Hon. Colin Brooks MP, Victorian Minister for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the MCEC main entrance |
| Industry Connect Evening | Opening night networking function at Melbourne Public on the Yarra River — exhibitors and visitors connecting before the show floor opened |
| AIFST Convention | Australian Institute of Food Science & Technology conference co-located across all four days for the first time — food scientists, researchers and regulators on the same floor as the exhibition |
| AIP training program | Australasian Institute of Packaging delivering mini-courses on sustainable packaging design, food waste reduction and packaging regulation throughout the event |
| Demo Exchange | Live equipment demonstrations running under real production conditions — portioning and slicing systems, automated filling and thermoforming, safety bandsaws |
| New FMCG segment | Introduced for 2026, focused on high-speed portioning, packing, labelling and retail-ready solutions for consumer goods manufacturers |
| PIDA Awards Gala Dinner | Packaging Innovation & Design Awards held alongside foodpro in Melbourne for the first time |
What stands out most in this edition is the depth of the associated program. The AIFST Convention running across all four days means food scientists, researchers and regulators are sharing the same building as the commercial exhibition — a genuinely useful arrangement for manufacturers trying to understand not just what technology exists today, but what the science behind food safety, shelf life and sustainability will require of them tomorrow.
The Australasian Institute of Packaging's training sessions have been consistently busy, reflecting how central packaging regulation and sustainable materials have become to procurement decisions across the sector. And the Demo Exchange — where processing and packaging equipment runs under genuine production conditions rather than static display — has been one of the most visited zones on the floor, for the simple reason that operators want to see equipment actually working before they commit capital to it.
BOOTH J35
The conversations happening on the floor
At Booth J35, the pattern of visitors has told its own story about where the industry's attention currently sits. We are seeing food and beverage manufacturers evaluating whether their current systems can keep pace with production complexity. Wholesale distributors asking pointed questions about inventory accuracy and multi-warehouse visibility. Packagers wanting to understand traceability and batch control at a level their current setup simply doesn't provide.
And, notably, a steady stream of industry consultants — advisors working with manufacturers on transformation projects who want to understand where SAP Business One and its add-on ecosystem sit relative to the other platforms they evaluate for clients.
That range of visitor — operator, distributor, packager, advisor — is exactly why we exhibit at events like foodpro rather than relying on outbound conversations alone. The problems people describe on a show floor are unfiltered. They haven't been shaped into a project brief yet. That is where the most useful conversations happen.
THE TECHNOLOGY ON DISPLAY
What we are showing at the booth
A recurring theme in these conversations is the gap between having an ERP system and having one that actually extends into the specific realities of food and beverage production — batch traceability, shop floor control, warehouse accuracy, and increasingly, ecommerce that doesn't require a second system of truth.
That is the gap our certified Boyum IT partnership is built to close. Boyum IT is the world's leading SAP Business One add-on developer, used by more than 14,000 companies globally, and ThynkProcess holds certified implementation status across its core manufacturing and warehouse products:
| Product | What it solves |
| Beas Manufacturing | Advanced production planning, shop floor control and costing for food and beverage manufacturers running complex production processes inside SAP Business One |
| Produmex WMS | Warehouse management built for food-grade operations — batch and lot tracking, FEFO picking, and full traceability from goods-in to dispatch |
| Produmex Scan | Mobile barcode scanning on the warehouse floor, connected directly to SAP Business One in real time — no re-keying, no end-of-shift reconciliation |
| B1 Usability Package (B1UP) | Workflow automation, custom alerts and usability enhancements that reduce manual data entry and enforce approval processes inside SAP Business One |
On the ecommerce side, the conversation is a little different — and worth being upfront about. Shopify does not offer a formal SAP Business One partnership, and it is not part of our certified partner stack. What we do have is direct, practical experience: a number of our clients run Shopify storefronts, and we have built and supported the integrations that connect those stores back into SAP Business One as the operational source of truth.
That experience has also shaped a clear point of view. For businesses with straightforward, consumer-facing catalogs, Shopify does exactly what it is built to do well. For SAP Business One companies managing complex B2B workflows — account-specific pricing, large SKU catalogs, approval chains, rep-assisted ordering — a platform built natively on SAP data, like FocusPoint, tends to remove friction that a general-purpose platform like Shopify was never designed to solve. It is a conversation about fit, not a case against Shopify itself, and it is one we are having on the floor dail
Booth J35 — MCEC Melbourne, 26–29 July. If you are walking the floor, come and find us. We are talking systems, not selling slides.
If you were at foodpro this week — what stood out to you most on the floor? Share your thoughts, we'd genuinely like to know what other operators are seeing.
