Brandenburg unites startups and traditional brands

Since 1991, and thus for more than 30 years, exhibitors from Brandenburg have been present at the International Green Week. On the traditional Brandenburg Day, Dietmar Woidke, Minister President of Brandenburg welcomed the fair guests on stage in Hall 21a and expressed special thanks to all producers "who make sure every day that we find our bread rolls, our butter, our jam and everything else we want on our plates."

New products are welcome alongside traditional brands in Brandenburg, and this year booth 124 is reserved for startups. Among others, Marktkost will be presenting itself here. Founded by Laura-Maria Horn, the company describes itself as a micro-online canteen for employee catering for small and medium-sized companies. "We want to make sure that people can eat something sensible at work without creating packaging waste," explains co-founder Benjamin Hologa.

Employees can choose from six different meals each day, delivered on Monday for the entire week. The range of meals varies from week to week; of the six fresh dishes, which are delivered ready-prepared in jars and only need to be heated, four are always either vegetarian or vegan.

An end to disposable plastic and aluminum lids

If Marktkost ever wants to stop using jars, it can turn with confidence to the startup on the other side of the stand: Here, siblings Juliane and Adrian Spieker with Pfabo GmbH present their deposit box reusable system as an alternative to disposable food packaging. The idea came to Juliane Spieker, who in 2002 received the award as business founder of the state of Brandenburg with Pfabo, when she collected garbage instead of shells on vacation with her children in 2018. She found the ideal partner in her brother Adrian, who was doing his master's in Integrated Design Engineering at the time. He is the mastermind behind the product design. PFABO tries to bring together the needs on the consumer and retailer side. The company uses pure polypropylene as its material. Currently, this is the most ecological solution for Pfabo compared to all other carefully tested materials, the Spiekers explain.

Currently, Pfabo's boxes, which come in a variety of sizes that take logistics into account, are used in more than 90 distribution points within Germany, including the Bio Company and Vivantes. In the future, demand could increase even further due to the mandatory reusable supply for restaurants, bistros and cafés, which will come into effect in January 2023.

The startups and all the other nearly 60 exhibitors from Brandenburg will meet visitors in Hall 21a.