GULFOOD WORLD ECONOMY SUMMIT WORKSHOPS

Food fraud in its various forms is on the rise and is predicted to increase significantly in the future and this could present a real threat to you and your business at any point in the food supply chain.

Understand the types of food fraud:

• Case studies from various food sectors
• Mitigation techniques to protect your business and your supply chain

The aim of this workshop is to get participants have a thorough understanding of:

• How we Identify the risks of food fraud in the supply chain
• Mitigation risk assessment techniques that can be adopted
• Mitigation controls for high-risk raw materials and ingredients

This workshop would cover:

• Food fraud examples in various food and supply chain sectors
• Introduction to PAS 96:2017 - Guide to protecting and defending food and drink from deliberate attack
• Introduction to Threat Assessment & Critical Control Point (TACCP)
• Introduction to Vulnerability Assessment & Critical Control Point (VACCP)
• Global certification standard requirements

This workshop is suitable for all those who are involved in technical and quality assurance of materials through the supply chain for food manufacturers, agents & brokers, importers and exporters, packaging manufacturers and retailers.

Meet Your Expert Workshop Leader:

Russell Parry founded Advanced Food Safety Limited in 1995, which is one of the most respected food safety consultancy & training companies in the UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health, and he has won many National awards over the years for his training, exporting and entrepreneurship, including Entrepreneur of the Year and Best Trainer of the Year.

Advanced Food Safety Limited is a multi-award-winning company including Exporter of the Year, Food Northwest Award for International Trade, Best Training Company of the Year and SME of the Year. Russell is the author of many food safety & HACCP textbooks & courses and has appeared on several TV & radio programmes as a food safety expert. Russell developed the brand leading ALLSAFE eLearning and distance Learning food safety training courses and downloads for BRCGS and GFSI Standards.

After 30 years in business Russell is still providing consultancy daily to a wide range of food manufacturers, food packaging manufacturers, storage & distribution companies and agents & brokers developing systems for them to meet and to maintain the requirements of the BRCGS Standards and other GFSI standards. He also provides an invaluable internal auditing service to maintain systems.

Working every day in industry gives Russell a genuine insight into the difficulties facing the food industry and this provides the basis of Russell’s practical support solutions for his clients.

The aim of this workshop is to help participants have a thorough understanding of how to:

• Build a successful company
• Prepare a company for an exit (IPO or M&A sell-side)
• Determine the best acquirors (strategics and PE)
• Determine the best pre-IPO and IPO investors
• Optimize investor returns through an exit

The workshop will cover:

• The importance for companies of achieving meaningful commercial scale, positive EBITDA and profitability
• Rationale for partnering with large corporate strategics
• How to find the right pre-IPO investors
• How to decide whether to pursue an IPO, M&A sell-side process or dual process (IPO and M&A)
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) that companies typically needed for an exit
• How far in advance a company should prepare for an IPO, M&A, or dual process
• The steps involved in the IPO, M&A, and dual process
• How companies can maximize synergies for an M&A transaction
• Most effective strategies to achieve a successful exit

The workshop is valuable for agriculture and food industry participants. AgTech & FoodTech company executives and investors will find the session beneficial at it will provide key insight on how to achieve a successful exit.

Meet Your Expert Workshop Leader:

Adam Bergman is a Managing Director at EcoTech Capital where he works at the intersection of technology innovation and climate change. Adam is a sustainability executive leader with almost 30 years’ investment banking experience raising capital and executing M&A transactions. He also provides strategic advice and financial guidance to senior executives and boards on capital raising, growth strategies, M&A, and partnerships. As one of the first investment bankers to focus exclusively on the CleanTech sector, starting in 2005, Adam is recognized as a leading subject matter expert and is a frequent speaker at industry events and publisher of articles on sustainability.

Adam has built industry leading AgTech investment banking practices at Citi and Wells Fargo by creating a broad ecosystem to help drive adoption of technology and innovation throughout the food & ag value chain. Adam established the AgTech cohort for Wells Fargo’s innovation incubator (IN2) at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2018. He is a technology advisor to Western Growers Association, which represents local and regional family farmers who grow over half the nation's fresh fruits, vegetables and tree nuts. Adam also is a technology advisor for SeaAhead, a bluetech startup platform in Boston, Massachusetts, whose mission is to support new, innovative ventures, with a focus on sustainability and the oceans.

Adam has a B.A. in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Additionally, he holds an M.A. in International Development from the International University of Japan.

Climate regulations are often seen as threats. This workshop flips the script by treating regulation as a competitive advantage. We will design an “Enabling Market Agreement” where clear government rules and long-term private contracts provide the certainty farmers need to invest in generational resilience. The shift is from compliance to strategic alignment, positioning farmers as the starting point from which resilience and global food security scale across the entire value chain.

You will develop an Enabling Market Agreement, clarifying the key public and private enablers required to align political cycles with long-term biological timelines across the value chain.

The Market Access Deal: From Compliance to Trusted Market Access

Trade requirements and sustainability standards are increasingly shaping market access. While compliance entails costs, lack of access represents a far greater risk for farmers and supply chains. This deal focuses on how verified performance and traceability can be translated into trusted and simplified market access, reducing friction and providing greater certainty for long-term investment.

Key question: How can compliance be recognized as a basis for trusted market access, rather than repeated controls and transaction costs across the value chain?

The Public Deal
Aligning Public Action with Intergenerational Timelines

Political decision cycles are short, while agricultural productivity, soil recovery and resilience depend on long-term biological processes. This misalignment limits farmers’ ability to plan and invest for generational resilience.

This deal explores how public policy conditions, incentives and regulatory approaches can be designed to provide long-term certainty, enabling investment despite volatility and short-term pressures.

Key question: What public policy conditions are required to align political decision cycles with long-term biological and investment timelines?

The Security Deal
From Spot Transactions to Strategic Partnerships

In an increasingly volatile global context, supply security has become a strategic priority. Transactional, spot-based relationships often fail under stress, exposing both producers and buyers to disruption.

This deal examines how commercial agreements can evolve toward long-term partnerships, aligning incentives and sharing risk to strengthen supply resilience.

Key question: How can commercial agreements evolve to support supply security while remaining viable for both farmers and buyers?

Expected Outcome:

A consolidated outline of an Enabling Market Agreement, identifying the critical public and private enablers required to align political cycles with long-term biological timelines, in a way that supports resilience and the needs of the entire value chain.

Meet Your Expert Workshop Leader:

Rodrigo Ramírez is Founder & CEO of Numen Bio, a regenerative agriculture and ecosystem services company operating across Latin America, Africa and Europe, focused on improving farmer profitability through market-based sustainability solutions.

With more than 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur, consultant, board member and corporate executive, he works at the intersection of farmers, markets and public institutions, designing frameworks where regeneration, traceability and ecosystem services are integrated into competitive market strategies. His approach centers on aligning market access requirements, long-term commercial agreements and public incentives so that sustainability delivers predictable, additional value for farmers.

He served as a Board Member of El Tejar, contributing to one of Argentina’s first financially scaled agricultural production models, implemented across 1 Mha, with 90% under leased land.

Rodrigo also played a key role in transforming a joint venture between Argentina’s two largest media groups into a leading national and regional exhibition platform, including the country’s flagship open-air agri-industrial and food industry fairs.

His professional path evolved from local roles to regional leadership positions, with strong involvement in institutional representation and government engagement, bringing a systemic view of agrifood resilience based on aligned incentives across the value chain.