Italian fresh and processed fruit and vegetables top the Italian agri-food exports. In fact, these products have just set an all-time record since the beginning of the century, with an increase in value of more than +6% favored by the global demand for healthy foods fueled by the Covid pandemic. This is what emerges from the analysis of the Italian farmers’ association Coldiretti on ISTAT data about the first five months of 2021. The data were released at the beginning of the Macfrut 2021 trade show.
The largest consumers of Italian fruit and vegetables are Germany, France, Great Britain, and Austria. These countries alone account for almost half (49%) of national exports in 2021, followed by Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Poland. Despite the Covid outbreak, exports of Italian fruit and vegetables to all these countries have increased significantly. In Germany, sales rose by almost +9%, in France by more than +4%, in Austria by almost +11%, in Switzerland by more than +7%, in the Netherlands by more than +9%, and in Poland by almost +22%. The only negative sign concerns the United Kingdom, where Italy’s exports recorded a drop of -10% due to the difficulties linked to Brexit.
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The president of Coldiretti Ettore Prandini says that “the fruit and vegetable sector can be a driving force for the Italian agricultural and food exports. The aim of the agreement concerning the port of Ravenna (signed at Macfrut, ed.) is precisely that of consolidating and developing the traffic of agri-food products. Creating a strongly interconnected system between the production areas and the national and European infrastructure network can maximize the logistic capacity of the Italian products”.