For decades it has been said that Italian retailers should have expanded abroad, but that the companies were not of a sufficient size to take the leap and measure themselves against the big international players. Then they arrived in Italy.
Some have gone, others are medicating their wounds. Others will arrive. Today, however, in 2015, albeit with the difficulty of establishing oneself abroad, with the opportunities of e-commerce and the interest of almost every country in the world for Italian food, things have changed somewhat. This was recently forcefully underlined at Fruit Innovation by the President of ICE, Riccardo Monti: “There is a huge demand from abroad for products of the Italian food industry. Today we are recognised leaders in quality, we must also become so in quantity”.
The goal which the Government has given itself is 50 billion in export turnover for 2020, compared to the 33 billion of today. “A goal within reach – said Agriculture Minister Maurizio Martina (on the right) – that can also count on a single agrifood made in Italy logo”, presented at Expo. The single logo is represented by an Italian flag with three waves that recall the concept of growth and development and by the wording The Extraordinary Italian Taste. The plan selects three segments: established, emerging and new markets. And in June the first campaign aimed at the United States and Canada will start with an investment of 30 million euros out of a total of 150 million envisaged overall.
“From today Italian agrifood – explained Minister Maurizio Martina – will be stronger and more recognisable on international markets. We finally have a single logo that will help consumers and operators to immediately identify the promotion of our products. We are starting with Expo Milano 2015 to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity for visibility and continue with the activities envisaged in our internationalisation plan on strategic markets. Over the next three years we will invest over 70 million euros in promotion, learning to work as a team and not spreading our resources too thinly. With the single logo we intend to work on recognisability, create a leit motiv that links all the promotion activities of the real Italian product on the international stage. Our goal is to support companies that in recent years have fielded their energy, ability to get things done and passion, companies that have enabled Italy to record a growth of 70% in agrifood exports in the last 10 years. We closed 2014 with 34.4 billion euros, in the first quarter of 2015 we are at over 8.7 billion euros and our objective is to reach 36 billion by the end of the year. Also by properly exploiting the Universal Exhibition in Milan we can make it and aim to achieve 50 billion in exports in 2020”.
Also large-scale distribution can play its part. In fact something is moving, precisely in the direction of using the many riches of Italian agrifood to develop business abroad. There have been examples in the past, so much so that Crai is present in Switzerland and Malta with 160 stores. The methods are different, but the two major Italian groups, Conad and Coop, have finally moved.
The Cooperative of retailers landed in China in February with a mixed formula, for the moment envisaging five stores and a network of vending machines with a wide selection of products that can also be purchased via the Internet.
The project of Coop Italia, on the other hand, has just started, with the creation of a specific company – Coop Italian food – to develop contacts with international retailers or distributors of Italian products abroad, to which to propose private label products and those of small suppliers.
The first episode of this new adventure is in China: according to inStoremag information, ItalMenu has been established, a company based in Hong Kong whose business is to import and distribute Coop branded products in the retail and HORECA channels. Three weeks of promotional activities with ICE are planned for June and July in 40 stores of the PARKnSHOP chain, which belongs to the Hutchison Whampoa group.
