Our Founder Julie Fisher and Head Chef Denise Lancaster headed to Sigep 2025 in Rimini (Italy) at the end of January. Sigep is the biggest Expo in Europe for the food sector and we love heading there for inspiration and to discover the newest equipment and techniques in the ice cream making world! Here's Julie's account of this year's trip.
"Well as we’re wending our way back through Northern Italy and into France in the rain, I’m reflecting on the last 5 days since we left London in the rain.
Sigep was the total overwhelming immersive experience it always is, my hero of the day was Gian Giulio Pinnafrom Zumex GroupFollowing many unanswered emails to their HQ over the last 9 months, we arrived at the stand, no one spoke any English, anyway with the use of google translate and Gian’s memories of Edinburgh and increasingly fluent English we spent a useful hour drinking very good orange juice and learning which Zumex juicer we need for lemons, limes and oranges, this will be massively labour saving which is always a good thing. Of course if we want to start making pomegranate sorbet again we need a whole different machine, so that one may have to wait.
Although we’re in the minority here, we squeeze and zest our fruit, making everything from scratch.
The paste houses have the biggest stands and the largest crowds and probably the largest profits but the resulting taste is just so generic, if I see another Amarena cherry I may scream.
We do things the hard way but our flavour is way superior, it’s worth putting in the extra effort.
Great stop FUGAR PRODUZIONE SPA to stock up on Silikomart S.r.l moulds so lots of new product development coming up Ruby Violet
It was definitely a good move to stay in Riccione and after 13 years we seem to have worked out how to get in and out without queuing for 1 hour.
Altogether a great experience I can recommend to anyone in the ice cream industry!
