Cine Europe 2023 Report

Trigage had a productive week last week in Barcelona attending seminars, presentations and meetings at Europe's largest Cinema Conference and Exhibition CineEurope. Held at the CCIB conference centre, a couple of kms north along the beach from downtown, this years show was optimistic. Films such as Avatar, Top Gun Maverick, Super Mario and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have performed well at the box office so the mood going into the event was overall positive.

There are still major challenges and similar for almost all industries, the key ones (aside from the film slate) are staff resourcing, rising energy costs and the cost of living crisis. Energy costs are the third largest spend behind people and filmed content and the message we received at the conference is that they are proving to be a major headache for most. Greening the cinema experience is becoming more important but it is still further down the list of priorities. Saying that, reducing energy reduces carbon emissions so a lot of initiatives to tackle energy can be win win for the environment too. The challenge here is how you make a quick ROI.

So lets take a look at what green and 'energy saving' initiatives were at the show.

Retail

On the trade show floor there was a striking booth from 'Green Cinema Packaging' a brand from Danish firm Stay-Well. Its a packaging brand dedicated to using greener products for popcorn containers, drinks cups etc utilising bamboo. Aside from minimising deforestation, bamboo is a green and renewable resource and is unbleached so could be a good alternative to traditional packaging if you are prepared to pay a little extra per container. More information can be found here at Stay-Wells website.

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The Coca-Cola Company hosted an interesting panel which delved into sustainability trends and their work to reach net zero by 2040. Research commissioned by Coca-Cola suggests that Climate change concern continues to rise amongst consumers even within the context of high inflation and the war in Ukraine. Their research shows that Climate change / global warming is now the second biggest concern behind conflict and is closely followed by other major environmental concerns such as water shortages, food shortages and depletion of natural reserves. Concerns around Sustainability are largest in the younger Gen Z and Millenial demographics. I doubt this research is new news to anyone reading this but it was good to see this research getting air time. Coca-Cola's big plan is to have 25% of reusable packaging by 2030 and to reach this goal they are pinning their hopes on out of home customers and consumers moving to reusable cups.

Andreas Hufer from German cinema chain Kinopolis returned (he presented last year) to provide an update on their reusable cup project - which sounds like it is proving to be a success with 4.5m cups now being cleaned and reused with the majority (over 80%) of consumers in favour. They have also found a way of reducing the price per cup to now be lower than for disposable cups.

The final presentation at the panel was from David Hall, Executive Director of Behaviour Change. David presented a film themed slide deck on how to go about getting buy in from stakeholders to changes in practise geared towards tackling climate change. Interesting to see that 'Does it work economically?' is a critical part of success - something that Trigage 100% agrees with.

Coca-Cola took a giant step forward at the show and used reusable cups for hot and cold beverages at their infamous trade show floor drinks area. They were also using, apparently, more efficient cup washing machines. It was a good effort, albeit the lids were a little leaky on the soft drink cups. On an aside it was disappointing to still see disposable plastic water bottles being handed out at presentations and seminars. And we couldn't find a water filling station anywhere within the CCIB for our reusable bottles.

Technology

The only other firm on the trade show floor who had a dedicated 'green themed' booth was CinemaNext - the largest of the exhibitor services companies in Europe. CinemaNext have a range of products that can manage power in your projection booth and also offer a range of other solutions e.g. xenon to laser light source upgrades, screen upgrades etc..

They were not the only ones promoting sustainable solutions: we met with a UK based systems integrator Bell Theatre Services who have a strategy to recycle 100% of your old projectors and sound kit by 2025 - either to breakdown and use as parts, or to recycle individual materials for other purposes. A French based company La Cabinerie, a Spanish company Media Center Audiovisual and UK based company Omnex are three other companies, to name a few, that are offering laser light source upgrades or refurbished projectors with new laser light sources. These solutions are great as they re-use old equipment and can reduce running costs by up to 75%. All good for the environment.

Technology vendors such as Christie, Cinionic, GDC and Sharp NEC are all promoting tech that has sustainability credentials and are looking for ways to help operators reduce their carbon footprint and mitigate rising energy costs. Laser is one as mentioned before, design and production to reduce waste and use circular economy materials is another > a point stressed by Cinionic and Barco in their presentations. Keeping equipment lasting longer is probably a scary concept to vendors whose traditional business models are based around selling new equipment so we applaud all of them for looking at ways of helping operators maximise the life of their in situ technology.

Screen manufacturers such as Harkness were promoting their sustainable manufacturing processes and materials. They were also educating us on how upgrading your screen sheet can help reduce energy costs: a higher gain screen can you mean you can turn down the brightness of your projector's light source and therefore save energy costs. We have looked at the business modelling and it does work for a lot of cinema screens and, again, helps your in situ technology last longer.

Software is also playing a bigger role in helping cinema operators manage resources and energy consumption. As the daily show programme for most cinemas is scheduled through the Cinema's POS you can now control power on and off for your entire cinema utilising software management systems. GDC, Unique and Trigage's partner Eikona Cinema all have solutions, at various levels of sophistication, to help with this.

Buildings

Some of the seating vendors, such as Ferco, are opening up conversations around the 'circular economy' and using more sustainable materials in their production processes. Ferco were proud to talk about their achievement of silver level of compliance under the Furniture Sustainability Standard ANSI/BIFMA 03-2019 and how they are working towards Gold then ultimately Platinum.

There was an interesting presentation by Stefanie Fischer, Director of Inventa Cinema Ltd on low-carbon, modular, affordable neighbourhood cinemas using materials such as straw. Their mantra is that they minimise energy requirements through 4 key pillars: Mean, Lean, Clean and Green. Interesting concept and, from what we have seen of their pricing per auditorium, very much an affordable solution for a new build or extension to an existing venue.

Buildings are the main source of in scope carbon emissions for cinemas either through the embodied carbon in the materials used to build them or through the use of electricity and fossil fuels used to heat/cool and power them. So it was disappointing to not see more vendors or have more conversations about what can be done to improve cinema buildings. There was hardly any talk on moving from Tungsten to LED lighting for lightboxes, signage, auditoriums and general space, something one of our clients Savoy Cinemas has implemented across their estate and getting a 6-12 month payback from.

So what are operators doing?

From our conversations it is clear that there are a number of cinema operators leading the way in terms of Environmental Sustainability; Kinopolis with their reusable cups and 'recycling champions', Cinecitta using BMS, renewables and even evaluating Hydro, Omniplex swapping light sources from xenon to laser, Vue and Odeon installing voltage optimisers and waterless urinals, Savoy Cinemas with LED lighting upgrades, heat exchangers , solar and education on travel options, The Depot Cinema with biodiversity, renewables, culture (to name a few of their initiatives) and finally Pathé Cinémas and their renewables and HVAC initiatives. There are many more examples of great work that were shared at the show. However, there are also cinema operators, especially smaller chains and sites that have older buildings and are in a spiral to the bottom > high energy costs, reduced margin, less cash to invest, higher costs of finance. The NextGeneration EU fund has helped mainland Europe operators but we haven't seen anything tangible in terms of support in other regions such as the UK, Africa, Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Virtual Carbon Fee?

There were some conversations on the sidelines about the 'collective' responsible for carbon emissions. The carbon emissions per box office admission is made up of HVAC, Sound & Vision, Lighting, F&B, Water, Waste, Business Travel, Audience Travel, Film production and distribution and the embodied carbon of the buildings to name a few. Who should be contributing towards the investment in solutions to reducing carbon emissions? Its our view that the cinema, the F&B suppliers, the film producers and cinema goers themselves should all be contributing. The question is how? Do we introduce an airline ticket style carbon offset scheme? What else? An open question for further debate.

Final Word

In summary it was a good event to catch up with the industry and do the litmus test on where it is in terms of moving towards a greener cinema going future. There is some good news and that there is a lot of work in progress, predominantly driven by the energy crisis. And we do believe more and more operators are adding Sustainability as an agenda topic at every board meeting. In addition, some of the in-country cinema associations are producing roadmaps, tools and resources for their members. However, we all know that there is still a long way to go before the cinema industry can call itself sustainable. Lets see how things progress over the next year until Cine Europe 24.

by Tim Potter

PS - Some would say travelling to an event on an aeroplane and then evangelising whilst there on how companies can reduce carbon emissions is counterintuitive. Ok, we did look at travelling by train - but the journey each way of over a day wasn't justifiable from the UK - time is still money. However, we did meet with operators and service providers from Italy, Spain, Turkey, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, UAE, Morrocco and Belgium to name a few- so imagine the number of extra flights we would have had to take to see all of these peeps face to face in their home countries. In our opinion travelling by air to shows such as Cine Europe is still justifiable - commercially and environmentally.

PPS - A note to the conference organisers: please please go digital with the show programme, the NDAs and use recycled paper (and not any plastic) for the show passes next year. Oh and yes put in water stations too. Thank you.