COUNTDOWN TO PRAGUE EVENT BEGINS

WUWM is busy gearing up for its upcoming conference in Prague in the next few weeks.

The event will be hosted by Lipence wholesale market in the Czech Republic, with the theme, ‘Prague: The Heart of Europe’.

The meeting, set for May 19-22, will host speakers from a variety of markets and countries. Topics up for discussion will range from European legislation to challenges and opportunities within the food supply chain, as well as recent market relocation and modernisation case studies.

Lipence market was founded as the first wholesale market in the former Czechoslovakia and is the only market of its kind in the Czech Republic.

It was established in 1991 by the reconstruction of premises that were, up until then, used only for large-scale agricultural production.

The site is operated as a private legal entity in the territory of the capital of Prague, on an area of almost 11 hectares. The total storage and sales area of the market represents more than 45,000sqm, of which more than 12,000sqm are allocated to coldstorage. The parking area measures more than 30,000sqm.

The wholesale market is a distinguished and comparable wholesale entity on a level similar to that usually found in the EU and the world over, rendering a wide range of services in the area of wholesaling perishables, fresh produce, tinned and frozen food, dried produce, fresh as well as artificial flowers, fish, seafood and various products for specialised retailers and caterers.

Retail customers can purchase a wide range of the goods needed for their business in a single location.

The market has been a WUWM member for several years, with director general Josef Podr, also a member of the WUWM board of directors.

He said: “Prague has always been the crossroads of trade routes within Europe and we would like to follow and build on this tradition and create conditions for a bridge of co-operation between the West and the East.”

He hopes to use the WUWM event to present the project for a new wholesale market in Prague, which is required to be built by 2013.

“We want to gather fresh ideas and input into this project,” he added.

The debates will be chaired by WUWM chairman Graham Wallace, Rungis president Marc Spielrein, Baltimore market executive director Don Darnell and Manuel Estrada-Nora, international director of Spanish market Mercasa.

The finalised list of speakers includes Czech member of the European Parliament Miroslav Ouzky, as well as Tomás García Azcárate, from the European Commission’s Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural Development, Torben Flinch, who heads up Copenhagen Markets and Christian Berphe, chairman of the new, private wholesale market of Lyon Corbas, in France.

The partners’ programme, running alongside the conference, will feature visits to Bretramka Museum, the Museum of Miniatures and the Castle of Karlstejn.

WUWM holds conferences twice a year, usually attracting more than 150 wholesale and retail market managers or food industry associates from around the world.

For more information or to register for the conference, visit www.wuwm-prague.cz

HALLSWORTH TO SPEAK

professor Alan Hallsworth, advisor to the UK Select Committee Inquiry into Markets and contributor to the 2005 Rhodes report, is to give a keynote speech at the WUWM Retail Conference next month.

The event, which will be hosted in the capital on June 26-27, will celebrate the recent successes of the UK markets sector.

But Hallsworth will admit that the sector still has its problems and stress that the industry should not neglect the difficulties that occur whenever a policy aimed at another sector carries implications for markets, such as the opening of 24-hour, seven-day-a-week stores with free parking, which pull shoppers away from city centres.

The second retail conference follows on from the first held in Hamburg, Germany, in June last year.

The activities to date include the formalisation of a European market definition and a survey that seeks to build a picture of the role and importance of retail markets in key European countries.

Councillor Stuart Bray, president of the National Association of British Market Authorities, said: “Markets in the UK are facing many challenges, particularly with an economic recession. We are not alone in this situation and coming together as delegates of WUWM, we can explore some of the issues in detail and share problems and, hopefully, look at solutions that we can all embrace.”