Tomato-based products are an excellence of the Italian food industry. In fact, Italy is not only the third largest processor in the world after the U.S. and China but also the leading processor of tomatoes by-products for final consumption with a 14.8 percent share worldwide and 56.5 percent in Europe, amounting to a turnover of €4 billion.
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These numbers testify to the value of the supply chain, which has just concluded a difficult harvesting-and-processing campaign due to difficult bargaining with farmers in the South, rising energy commodity prices, and problems that have affected the sector for years such as misinformation about the origin and quality of tomatoes.
THIS YEAR’S HARVESTING CAMPAIGN BY THE NUMBERS
Anicav, the Italian association of vegetable food canning industries, recently released data for the 2022 tomato harvesting campaign. About 5.5 million tons of tomatoes were processed (-10% vs 2021) on a total of 65,180 hectares of cultivated land (-8.5% vs 2021), of which 37,024 were in the North and 28,156 in South-Central Italy.
In the South-Central basin, farms processed 2.59 million tons of tomatoes (-12% vs 2021), while in the North the final processed product amounted to 2.89 million tons (-6.3% vs 2021). In the first six months of 2022, export sales increased in both volume (+10.3) and value (+23.2).
