Focus On - What Nurtures Italian Exports? Discovering the Opportunities of the Agrifood Value Chain

Executive summary

Italian exports of food products and machinery for their transformation have grown at an increasing pace in the past year, with interesting prospects for future development.

Half of the € 21 billion in food exports in 2015 consisted of three products: pasta, wine and cheese, and they outperformed some competitors, such as Germany and France, and the worldwide trend. Similar growth was registered for the specific machinery used to produce these three food categories, though the rate of growth was slower in this case.

In a supply-chain approach, machinery and foods may be two sides of the same coin. The possibility of forming a system of these two areas of Italian production excellence opens new opportunities for pinpointing promising markets and a new road for expanding in foreign markets.

Focusing on the six sectors of opportunity (pasta, wine, cheese, and pasta-, wine- and cheese-making machinery) and on four target markets (United States, China, India and Mexico), different in size but with high potential, € 400 million in additional exports could be obtained by 2019. The greatest potential for export is offered by the U.S. wine market.

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