Interzoo 2026

Exercise 1: Where's your biggest data gap? 

• Over-formulating as a safety buffer collected the most stickers by far. That's telling. When you don't fully trust your numbers, you compensate. And that compensation has a real cost. Every extra gram of ingredient added "just to be safe" chips away at your margin, batch after batch. 
• Moisture variability you can't predict until the dryer finishes was a close second. This is one of the most frustrating blind spots in production: by the time you know, it's often too late to act. The industry is clearly feeling this pain.
• QC results that never make it back into formulation assumptions was consistently flagged. A classic disconnect: quality data sits in one system while formulation decisions are made in another. The loop never closes, and the same issues keep coming back. 

Exercise 2: How important is solving this? 

• Keeping ingredient data current:  most visitors are already actively working on this. The urgency is real: outdated data at the moment of formulation is a silent margin killer. 
• Speed of reformulation when costs or specs change: high importance across the board. In a volatile raw material market, the ability to reformulate fast isn't a nice-to-have. It's a competitive advantage. 
• Connecting lab/QC results back to formulation: strong clustering toward "already working on this." The awareness is there. Now the industry needs the tools to make it happen seamlessly. 
• Using AI or predictive tools: still early for many, but curiosity is clearly building. Those already exploring it are ahead of the curve. 

The takeaway? The industry knows its gaps. Data lag, moisture unpredictability, disconnected QC loops:  these aren't new problems, but the urgency to solve them is growing. Professionals are done accepting inefficiency as the status quo. The appetite for integrated, AI-powered formulation tools is real, and it's only accelerating. 

Thank you to everyone who stopped by, shared their challenges, and trusted us with their time. These conversations are exactly what drives us forward.