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Icicle ERP Highlights from the American Food Sure Summit and evokeAG 2024

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Icicle Team | 1018 Views

We were excited to showcase Icicle ERP at the American Food Sure Summit and Food Innovation Summit in Atlanta, Georgia last month – and that was right on the heels of our return to evokeAG in Australia. These trips were supported by the CanExport program and the Trade Commissioner Service.

Here are some highlights from those food industry events, plus our visit to Keith’s Quality Foods at their advanced manufacturing facility.

Icicle at evokeAG 2024 to Meet Australian AgriFood Innovation

The Icicle team flew out to Australia for the evokeAG 2024 conference for agrifood innovation, which took place on February 20-21 in the Country of the Whadjuk Nyoongar people, Perth City (Boorloo), Western Australia. We attended as part of a contingent of Canadian companies sponsored by the Trade Commissioner Service and supported by the CanExport program. We were also selected to represent Canada in the International AgTech Pitch Challenge.

evokeAG 2024 was bustling with tech companies offering a variety of new solutions for the agrifood industry. A standout example was the alternative plastics manufacturer Uluu, which has developed an incredible new biodegradable product using seaweed. There were also interesting presentations, like Nina Schick’s about the “Mind-bending” possibilities of AI for agrifood (a topic of particular interest to us lately).

Part of what drew us to Australia is that the federal and state governments are investing heavily in the food processing industry as part of the Reshaping Australian Food Systems roadmap, which last year laid out dozens of opportunities and R&D priorities to transform Australia’s food systems to be more sustainable, more productive, more resilient, and more equitable. The roadmap focuses on five areas:

  • Enabling equitable access to healthy and sustainable diets
  • Minimizing waste and improving circularity
  • Facilitating Australia’s transition to net zero emissions
  • Aligning resilience with socioeconomic and environmental sustainability
  • Increasing value and productivity.

Investments in the booming beverage sector and expanding food processing operations in the northern regions of Australia (including parts of the Western Australian state where we visited) have been prioritized in recent years too.

Overall, we were very impressed by the range of Western Australian agritech programs and start up accelerators present at evokeAG, which are amplifying the growth of local companies like Uluu. We especially appreciated the warm hospitality of the Trade Commissioner in Australia, Ven (Rudaralingum) Coopamootoo, who specializes in agriculture and processed foods, fish and seafood, forestry and wood products, as well as wine, beer and spirits, and who introduced us to a number of local companies.

Keith Quality Foods and their Advanced Automated Manufacturing Facility

While we were in the area (very broadly speaking), we leaped at the chance to visit Icicle user Keith’s Quality Foods and check out their beautiful, state-of-the-art processing facility that recently opened on the total opposite side of the continent in the Yugambeh region of South East Queensland, near Brisbane. As a frozen foods manufacturer, Keith’s is an industry leader in adopting new technologies – which is why they stood out to us as an ideal candidate for the Icicle community.

The Icicle development team has collaborated with the team at Keith’s to launch a range of new Icicle features to support their goals, and the goals of all food and beverage manufacturers. One of the features we worked on with the team at Keith’s is Icicle ERP’s accounting integration for Xero, a powerful cloud-based accounting software that is equipped to handle the complex and strict regulatory requirements for invoices and other accounting documents in Australia. Since Icicle is uniquely able to handle these kinds of complexities across different markets, we’re really proud to offer the Xero integration to Icicle customers alongside QuickBooks Online, and grateful to Keith’s for helping us deliver it!

All the innovation and sustainability initiatives in Australia really prepared us to dive right into the Food Sure Summit and Food Innovation Summit a few weeks later.

The American Food Sure Summit and Food Innovation Summit

Snapshot from the American Food Sure Summit 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia

In March, the Icicle team travelled to Atlanta, Georgia (on Muscogee and Cherokees territory) for two overlapping Food World conferences, starting with the American Food Sure Summit.

First, we joined industry leaders and experts in food safety and quality at the American Food Sure Summit, which we were honoured to sponsor. This year’s conference highlighted strategies for crisis management, product recalls, and food defence, and covered new developments in regulatory requirements as well as food safety culture and leadership initiatives. Like evokeAG, the American Food Sure Summit also highlighted sustainability and new technologies that are changing the landscape of the industry.

The emphasis on technology and innovation was only amplified at the 16th Annual American Food Innovate Summit that started on March 26th. Between the two conferences, our week was jam-packed with sessions and full of activity on the exhibition floors. Check out Food World’s interview with Icicle Technologies CEO Steven Burton soon!

While he was in Atlanta, Steven Burton also hosted an online webinar with Food Industry Executive on the “Latest Advancements in AI for Human-Centered Food Production Automation”! Register to watch the on-demand recording of the event here.

Posted in: American Food Innovate Summit American Sure Food Summit Australia evokeAG Food Sure Summit Food World Innovation Steven Burton sustainability