--- title: "[EN] From a hall in Utrecht to the world stage: the story of VIV Europe that no one has told you" description: "Federico CastellóThere are trade fairs that exist to sell and trade fairs that exist to think. VIV Europe belongs to the second category, although along the way it has also achieved the first, and..." url: https://nexusavicultura.com/from-a-hall-in-utrecht-to-the-world-stage-the-story-of-viv-europe-en/ date: 2025-04-24 modified: 2026-05-03 author: "Federico Castello" image: https://nexusavicultura.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/VIV-EUROPE-fotos-feria-ORNITOPHILIA-empresa-PASS-REFORM-stand-circa-1930.jpg categories: ["Destacados", "EVENTOS", "NOTICIAS DE EMPRESAS"] tags: ["#PAS-REFORM", "#VIV", "avicultura en EUROPA", "avicultura en Países Bajos", "english"] type: post lang: es --- # [EN] From a hall in Utrecht to the world stage: the story of VIV Europe that no one has told you (https://www.linkedin.com/in/federicocastello/) There are trade fairs that exist to sell and trade fairs that exist to think. VIV Europe belongs to the second category, although along the way it has also achieved the first, and by a wide margin. But its history —which begins well before anyone called it «the poultry trade fair with the largest number of innovations in the world»— is the history of a sector that learned to see itself with global ambition from a corner of Holland. VIV Europe has just taken a historic step, as it announced in January 2026, moving from **(https://nexusavicultura.com/viv-europe-rompe-su-propio-molde-de-cada-cuatro-anos-a-cada-dos/)**, and this change reflects the dizzying pace at which (https://nexusavicultura.com/viv-europe-pasa-a-bienal-porque-cuatro-anos-en-avicultura-ya-es-una-eternidad/) innovates today. What you may not know is where this trade fair really comes from, nor how much ground it has covered from its origins to becoming the world reference event for innovations in poultry farming. **The 1960s: when it all began with live birds** Before VIV proper existed, since before 1926 Utrecht was already hosting (https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/munavi/munavi_a1926m12v6n60@reavicultura.pdf), devoted both to the exhibition of live birds and to poultry equipment. It was a peculiar mix, a child of its time, that reflected a poultry industry that was still more artisanal than industrial. But the Dutch —with that entrepreneurial vision that characterises them— understood before anyone else that the future of poultry production lay in technology, not in plumage. The *Ornithophilia* was the embryo from which, in 1974, the first VIV would be born as a fair specialised in professional poultry and livestock farming. With 204 exhibitors and barely 13,700 visitors in that first year, no one would have bet then on what it was going to become. But the model was solid: **a fair without live animals**, **focused** on the value chain, on know-how, **on busines**s. Utrecht also had a logistical advantage that was hard to match: located in the geographic heart of Europe, an hour from Amsterdam airport, with access by train, road and air from any capital on the continent. **1982: first Spanish visits** At the 1982 edition of VIV, a small group of European specialised journalists were invited to visit it. Even then, with 345 exhibitors and 18,800 m² of stands spread across three pavilions, the fair was a breathtaking experience. The catalogue was published in four languages —Spanish was not yet among them— and the international representation was already striking: Holland, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, Italy, France. Spain, sadly, was conspicuous by its absence on the stands, isolated from the European concert it aspired to join. What strikes me about that year was not the size of the fair, but **its visionary orientation**. While in Spain people were still debating whether or not to mechanise feeders, in Utrecht automated systems for ventilation control in poultry houses were on display, heat recovery units for broiler rearing facilities, or Dutch machines for mechanising every operation in the hatchery with electronic systems tailored to each customer. It was another world. And that world was going to arrive. **From national fair to global stage (1986-19…)** In 1986, renamed **VIV Europe **to distinguish it from VIV Asia (*and the other VIVs on other continents that the organisation would go on creating*), the fair already had 499 exhibitors from 25 countries and received more than 54,000 visitors. The now-defunct magazine *Selecciones Avícolas* organised that year the first of several group trips with Spanish poultry farmers and technicians —about fifty, including professionals and their families—, which turned the visit to Utrecht into something resembling a pilgrimage of knowledge. The Spanish group visited the latest-generation Mobba egg graders, Dutch laying-hen farms with 80,000 birds in a controlled environment, poultry slaughterhouses with 6,000 birds/hour and full automation, the Intervet laboratory and the genetics company Euribrid in Boxmeer: all of that, and what was seen at VIV itself, undoubtedly helped when it came to making subsequent strategic decisions for the still-few Spaniards who attended. For the 1990 edition, which at the time was held in the month of November, VIV broke its own records again: 36,500 m², 1,046 firms represented, 57,852 visitors of which 11,510 came from abroad. **The proportion of foreign visitors grew edition after edition as the most eloquent indicator of its international projection**. In 1994, VIV’94 received visitors from 27 countries with direct stands and reached 58,395 attendees —of whom 17,096 were foreign— over four days in November. It was the **first time the organisers awarded innovation medals to the most outstanding products**: incubators with computerised remote control, automated evisceration systems, electronic egg-yolk pigmentation calibrators. The fair was no longer just a showcase, it was a tribunal of innovation. **The 21st century: the consolidation of a model** VIV 2001, co-located for the first time with VICTAM International —the trade fair for compound feed manufacturing technology—, represented another qualitative leap. The VIV+VICTAM combination concentrated the entire chain in Utrecht: from raw material to processed feed, from the genome to the feed. At that edition, with 766 VIV exhibitors and an additional 326 from VICTAM, 32 nationalities and a total of 5 continents represented, the fair reached a dimension that few events in the agro-industrial sector could match anywhere in the world. **The 2010 edition: an ashy year (literally)** The (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erupci%C3%B3n_del_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull_de_2010) in 2010, disrupted the European air-traffic flow just as VIV was beginning. That edition, with only 10,000 visitors against those expected, paradoxically demonstrated two things: that the fair was so dependent on international connectivity that a volcanic cloud could halve it, and that even so the exhibitors and organisers held their own. **In 2014, having gotten over the bad spell, VIV outdid itself** with 20,214 visitors from 136 countries and what was probably its best edition until then. **2018: the year poultry farming was looking to the future from Utrecht** VIV Europe 2018 was the one that impressed me most of all the poultry trade fairs I have covered throughout my career. Not only because of the figures —591 exhibitors from 47 countries, 18,363 professional visitors from 144 countries— but because of the **density of ideas** that could be felt in its halls. Chicks hatching directly on the farm on the litter, vaccination robots for breeder hens, red-mite counting systems by means of intelligent perches, cloud management programmes accessible from the mobile in real time: all of that was no longer the future of poultry farming. It was the present. Trends that the next edition, the 24th, June 2022, of VIV EUROPE, only consolidated. **From Utrecht to the world: the expansion of the VIV model** What began as a Dutch trade fair for intensive livestock farming has become, over time, a global brand. VIV Asia in Bangkok, VIV MEA in Abu Dhabi, VIV China in Beijing, VIV Russia in Moscow, VIV Turkey in Istanbul. The Dutch model —a technical fair, without live animals, focused on the value chain and on the direct connection between suppliers and buyers— proved to be exportable to any latitude where there was a poultry industry with the ambition to grow. But the centre of gravity has always been Utrecht. Because Utrecht is not just a convenient city on the European map: it is the place where, for five decades, world poultry farming has come to take its own pulse, to discover what is to come, to do the business that cannot be done anywhere else with such a concentration of talent and decision-making per square metre. The 2026 edition, from 2 to 4 June, is the 25th. And it is the first of a new biennial cycle. Whoever is not there will not just miss a trade fair. They will miss the conversation that defines the sector for the next two years. **(https://www.linkedin.com/in/federicocastello/)** Founder of NeXusAvicultura.com 🔗 *Free registration for professionals at: *[ europe.viv.net](https://register.visitcloud.com/survey/2hszs6azm87v7?utm_source=nexusavicultura) --- To learn more: -. (https://europe.viv.net/es/) trade fair -. International calendar of events:  (https://nexusavicultura.com/calendario/) --- [![](https://nexusavicultura.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/VIV-EUROPE-2026-registration-form-NeXusAvicultura-20260413-4.png)](https://register.visitcloud.com/survey/2hszs6azm87v7?utm_source=nexusavicultura) ## If you are a poultry professional, here is the direct link to the **(https://register.visitcloud.com/survey/2hszs6azm87v7?utm_source=nexusavicultura)**