Vinitaly focus on export and on the Italian market decline.

How to seize the new opportunities coming from abroad, particularly from Asian markets, and how to support the internal Italian market are the two main themes of the 2011 Vinitaly, the most important Italian Wine exhibition,  which is taking place in Verona (Italy), and will end on April 12 .

The Italian wine business is quite a big one, worth € 13.5 billion plus  a €2 billion deriving from induced activities. But there are lights and shadows. For example, on the exports side, 2010 experienced a growth  reaching a +12% equal to 3.93 billion euro, while domestic consumption is decreasing.
For the first time, reports Coldiretti (the Italian association of Agriculture farmers), 2010 showed a stagnation in the internal sales, now at € 3.89 billion. 

Riello, the President of Veronafiere, has stressed even more the wine business critical situation, the decline in domestic consumption, which continues, “was between 100 liters per capita in the Seventies, up to 45 liters in 2007, about 40 liters per person nowadays” showing a “further decreasing trend by 2015. ” The problem, recently highlighted by Giuseppe Martelli, director general of Assoenologi (the Italian Association of oenologists), is that “an oenology structured like the Italian one, cannot rely only on export.”

A couple of data: “in Australia only ten companies produce more than 90% of the wine exported, in Chile of 120 wineries, 100 are working only for export. In Italy, however, companies are more than 450 thousand, with an average size that is below the three hectares, compared to 300 in Chile and Australia. ”

Even a survey Vinitaly Winenews-emerges as foreign markets are critical to revenue growth, a situation that can cope with the larger companies, but few compared to many small enterprises that characterize the Italian production scenario and still have turnover rather weak.

A Vinitaly-Winenews survey on 50 companies among the most representative of the Italian business, show that 2010 ended with an average revenue increase of 8%, driven in particular by exports  (+14%).  As per 2011, the report show a degree of optimism: 75% of the interviewed said to be quite positive, 15% positive while a 10% of wineries that still feels the situation to be critical. The most critical points highlighted by the survey are economy instability, weak consumption, the loss of international competitiveness, the hars internatioanl competition.

The boom in exports, according to Coldiretti, is due largely to the U.S., which in 2010 became the country with the highest consumption of wine in the world. The American market, which is worth about $ 30 billion, is covered for 61% of production in California, but Italian wines are the most consumed ones, growing in value by 11%.

The most important destination of Italian wines are Germany, +4% in 2010, China – exports to this country doubled in 2010 – India, +65%, and Russia, +58%, equal to €104 million.

Coldiretti also analyzed the important value of the employment world of wine: the 250,000 Italian companies create jobs for for 1.2 million people. There are about half a million owners of vineyards, which have about 210,000 employees, of which over 50,000 are young and 30,000 are foreigners. And the wine business does not end in the vineyard, opportunities being in adjacent sectors like trade and catering, glass, cork, label and packaging, as well as research, publishing, finance, wine tourism, health, bio-energy. (Source:manageronline.it)