NEW QUALIVITA REPORT, THE VALUE OF THE BRANDED PRODUCT SUPPLY CHAIN
The 20th Ismea Qualivita Report, presented on 22 November 2022, photographs a solid sector that creates wealth for the entire country. Results that outline a passage of great momentum for the Italian PDO economy, to be attributed to the work of a complex and organised system that throughout the country involves 198,842 operators and 291 Protection Consortia authorised by the Ministry.
After a 2020 marked by the pandemic, in which the sector nevertheless showed good resilience and continuity in production, in 2021 the Italian food and wine sector is showing production and economic data that outline much more than a simple recovery, setting record values on the domestic market and abroad. The overall value of PDO PGI certified food and wine production in 2021 reaches 19.1 billion euro for +16.1% on an annual basis, a figure that brings the contribution of the PDO economy to the overall turnover of the national food and wine sector to 21% for the first time. The PDO PGI agrifood sector reaches 7.97 billion euros (+9.7%), while the wine sector 11.2 billion euros (+21.2%).
At the level of territorial impacts of PDO/PGI supply chains, in 2021 not only is there growth for 18 out of 20 regions, but for 10 of these there is a double-digit percentage change year-on-year. The four regions of the North-East strengthen their role as economic drivers and for the first time they exceed a total of more than 10 billion euros, while the North-West (+10.8%) and Centre (+15.5%) also grow; particularly significant is the figure for the ‘South and Islands’ area, which in 2020 was the only one to grow and in 2021 marks a further +13.2%. The territorial analysis of the Ismea-Qualivita Report is also enriched by a new impact indicator that, for each region, expresses the incidence Abstract Report 2022 of the PDO PGI sector on the total regional agri-food sector: the result is a picture that shows how, for some regions, the PDO PGI economy is a primary driver for the entire agri-food system of the territory.
On the export front, PDO PGI food and wine PDOs will reach 10.7 billion euros in 2021, for a weight of 21% in Italian agri-food exports, a result that is the sum of a “double record” for the two sectors: food with 4.41 billion euros and +12.5% on an annual basis and wine with 6.29 billion euros and +13.0% growth. In the domestic market, after the growth in consumption in the large-scale retail trade in 2020 as an effect of the pandemic and the related restrictions on other channels, the figures for 2021 and the first nine months of 2022 show a surprising resilience of results in the large-scale retail trade. In 2021, PDO PGI food and wine sales in value recorded a very slight year-on-year decrease (-0.5%), which becomes a positive change when considering only sales by fixed weight (+0.7%); a trend confirmed also in the first nine months of 2022, which show no change for PDO PGI product sales in value compared to the same period in 2021.
The meat products category has 43 names and accounts for 25% of the PDO PGI food sector’s production value and 14% of IG food exports. The report shows a slight contraction in certified production but growth for the sector’s producer value, supported by rising prices at origin, with double-digit changes for several PDO PGI products. After the negative effects of the pandemic in 2020, especially for products destined for markets in non-EU countries, there was a double-digit recovery in the export value of the category.
