IN Brief:
- VIV Europe 2026 closed its 25th edition in Utrecht with 14,691 professional visitors from 135 countries.
- The event brought together 461 exhibitors across feed, animal health, farming, processing, packaging, logistics, and automation.
- From 2026, the show moves into a biannual cycle, giving the animal protein sector a more regular European meeting point.
VIV Europe has closed its 25th edition in Utrecht, bringing together 14,691 professional visitors from 135 countries and 461 exhibitors across the animal protein chain.
The event ran from 2 to 4 June 2026 at Jaarbeurs Utrecht and covered feed and grain technology, feed ingredients and additives, animal health, breeding and hatching, farm production, processing and packaging, cold-chain logistics, laboratory services, IT, and automation. Exhibitors came from 37 countries and occupied 20,500 square metres of net exhibition space across six halls.
The 2026 edition also marks a structural change for the show. VIV Europe is moving to a biannual cycle, with the next edition scheduled for 13 to 15 June 2028. A shorter cycle gives the European animal protein industry a more regular technical and commercial focal point as production systems respond to disease pressure, resource constraints, climate targets, antimicrobial reduction, welfare expectations, and supply volatility.
The value of the event lies in the way it connects upstream and downstream production. Feed formulation, farm equipment, breeding, hatchery systems, biosecurity, processing equipment, packaging, refrigeration, logistics, and data platforms are often treated as separate categories, but they increasingly shape one another. Feed efficiency affects growth rates and liveweight uniformity; liveweight variation affects processing yield; processing yield influences pack economics and customer service.
The conference programme reflected that convergence, with sessions on AI and digital tools in farm and feed management, antimicrobial reduction, global protein and feed trade, precision nutrition, smart feed processing, dairy data systems, and resilient food systems. These themes are moving into operational planning as labour shortages and cost pressure push producers towards more data, more automation, and tighter biological control.
Processing and packaging technology formed a central part of the show’s industrial relevance. Protein plants are no longer passive recipients of farm output. They need closer visibility of genetics, feed, health, welfare, transport, and handling because each variable affects line balance, yield, labour efficiency, food safety, and product quality. The strongest production systems increasingly look like connected industrial networks rather than linear supply chains.
Animal-health risk gives that integration added urgency. Newcastle disease pressure in continental Europe and continued avian influenza vigilance have shown how quickly biological events can become manufacturing problems. A processing plant can have strong equipment, trained labour, and customer demand, yet still lose volume if disease controls interrupt live supply.
Equipment launches at the event showed how processors are responding. Ishida’s poultry inspection and automation line-up at VIV Europe demonstrated the increasing focus on quality control, inspection, and efficient handling in protein production. Inspection, grading, weighing, and automation are becoming part of the same performance system as farm and feed data.
Automation is likely to take a larger role at future editions. Farm data, feedmill optimisation, robotic handling, grading, inspection, cold-chain monitoring, and plant-level analytics are moving into the same investment conversation. Companies trying to produce protein with fewer labour bottlenecks, higher welfare assurance, and better control over cost per kilo need clearer connections between biological and mechanical performance.
With VIV Europe now on a two-year rhythm, the event becomes a regular marker of how quickly the animal protein sector is reorganising around data, resilience, and closer coordination from feed to finished product. The feed-to-food chain is still fragmented in ownership, but technically it is becoming harder to separate.
