In 2019 the International Hop Growers’ Convention (www.ihgc.org; IHGC) congress is being held in Slovenia for the fourth time. So far, the congresses have been held in Žalec (1953), Ljubljana (1969) and in Žalec again in 1992. The biannual IHGC congress presents an excellent opportunity for sharing expert opinions and market information, for visiting hop growing farms and research institutions in the host country as well as networking between participants and stakeholder. The Congress, organized from 29th of July until 2nd of August, 2019 attended 181 delegates and visitors in total. On the third day, 31st of July, the Congress took place in Žalec and 150 participants visited IHPS’s facilities. The LIFE Program and LIFE BioTHOP project were promoted with dissemination material and talking to the participants on the stand in front of the Slovenian Institute of Hop Research and Brewing (IHPS) building. There was a lot of interest in the topic of the project, especially replacing polypropylene twines in the hop fields with PLA compostable ones, and some of the participants of the Congress subscribed to the BioTHOP newsletters.
IHGC has been set up to safeguard the interests of the hop growers and of the whole hop industry in the member countries. It is a global hop industry network for growers, merchants and other experts in a hop industry from 20 countries from all 5 continents (12 countries from EU, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Ukraine, Argentina, and China).
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