Seoul Food 2015, one of the four largest food fairs in Asia, drew about 627 foreign food and related businesses and 3,300 foreign spectators, shedding a new light on South Korea’s exporters.

Sponsored by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, the expo ended its four-day run from May 12-15 at KINTEX in Ilsan, boasting record-high attendance, export consultations worth $560 million and initial export installments worth $7.8 million.

For Korean businesses that are not export-oriented, however, the practicality of this year’s Seoul Food was brought in question. Many participating small and medium-sized non-exporters said this year’s food expo was unlikely to boost sales.

Regarding the sum of the buying consultation and domestic initial deal size of the non-food sections, including the machinery section, the organizing committee of KOTRA said such details will not be available until August, adding to the controversy.

On the opening day on May 12, the machinery makers in exhibition hall No. 1 blamed the organizer’s inconsiderate block planning for low traffic from the authentic local buyers who voluntarily came to the expo.

Last year, the two sections had been placed together in one exhibition hall, enabling the food industry managers to check out the two complementary goods at one place. But this year, the organizer put them in two separate exhibition buildings, Exhibition Hall No. 1 and No. 2, for expansion and alleged buyers’ convenience purposes.

“Seoul Food lost its core merit, because they messed up the browsing flow by tearing the food machinery-makers apart from the food-makers sections; we don’t see the buyers, they don’t see us either.” said Sung Jun-hyun, the deputy general manager of returning automatic machinery maker Ilheung. The angry seller alleged that the separation isolated the machinery section from the SME food companies.

“This year, we are only seeing officials from big companies that we invited (out of courtesy),” the angry seller added, vowing that it would no longer participate in Seoul Food. “The machine expo seems like a smarter choice. There we can meet voluntary visitors for 1.3 million won ($1,180), which is only about half of what we paid here.”

Not far from Sung’s booth, another participant from a food ticket printer maker, said “the event is technically for networking purposes, and not for sales.” The manager, who preferred to be anonymous, has participated in the event for five years to form business networks with the food machine makers of different categories in the neighboring booths.

The businessman said the machinery-makers have several options to participate in food and machine-related business conventions.

“My rival companies went to the franchise expo. But the franchise expo is all about fried chicken and coffeehouse franchises, so we came here instead, to promote my company’s brand name,” the machine seller added.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)