The Italian government could not have chosen a better occasion to sign an agreement with Alibaba, the world's largest e-commerce platform, to promote the agri-food excellence of our country but above all to actively combat the thriving industry of fake food and wine made in Italy which steals substantial market shares from Italy, and damages our image in the world .
While in fact the Prime Minister Renzi was in China for the G20 did not miss the opportunity to visit Hangzhou, where he visited the Alibaba Campus and met with President Jack Ma, with whom the Italian government signed an agreement intended to mark the export of our agri-food products to Asian markets.
According to the agreement, in fact, over three years, the Alibaba Group will provide Italian companies with facilities for quick registration in the Tmall platform and support for online promotion. Not only are significant prospects opening up for the made in Italy agri-food that lands on a platform of 430 million of Chinese and Asian consumers but a decisive firm point has been made on the defense and safeguarding of our products from the counterfeit industry which ranges, just to give an example, from Parmesan whose sale has been prevented which up to now amounted to 99 thousand tons of fake Parmesan, 10 times more than our production, to Prosecco, another jewel of Made in Italy which is experiencing a moment of great fortune on international markets, for which as many as 13 million bottles had been put up for sale but certainly none of the these produced in Veneto.
“The agreements with Alibaba - said the Minister Maurizio Martina - represent a concrete point of our strategy of support for Made in Italy agri-food in the world, which also exploits innovative formulas to protect and promote quality products. We have managed to grant our geographical brands a very high level of protection on the Chinese platform. A fundamental result that, in the WTO, we have been pursuing for decades and that instead on the web we have managed to build in a few months and with exceptional results. In terms of promotion, we had made a commitment at Vinitaly to be protagonists on the day of wine on 9/9 and we have kept it: the Chinese market offers opportunities that must be seized immediately”.
In terms of protection, Italy is the only country in the world to have guaranteed PDO and PGI products the same protection against counterfeiting as commercial brands on the e-commerce platform.
The alliance with Alibaba for fight counterfeiting started last year and the numbers are impressive: a protection that with this agreement is extended from the b2b platform, accessible only to companies, to the b2c one, giving a guarantee to the 430 million users of the Alibaba site network that they will be able to buy real Made in Italy.
To identify counterfeits, the Ministry of Agricultural Policies has set up an operational task force of the Fraud Repression Inspectorate which searches for counterfeit products on a daily basis and reports them to Alibaba. Within 3 days the advertisements are removed and the sellers informed that they are usurping the Italian geographical indications.
With the new agreement, Alibaba also undertakes to promote moments of education for sellers and consumers on the importance of food geographical indications.
The agreement provides for forms of protection of our agri-food brands, but also of promotion. Italy invests to enhance its food and wine excellence on the Chinese site. It starts with the wine. On September 9, Alibaba dedicates a special event to our products that was announced at the last Vinitaly by Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba. Since then, the Italian wineries present on the platform have increased from 2 to 50 with over 500 labels.
For wine day, then, a strong communication action is planned by the Ministry of Agricultural Policies, the Ministry of Economic Development and ICE with a specific target on consumers who spend the most on Alibaba. A commitment destined to be further strengthened in the coming weeks thanks to the inclusion of China in the strategic investment targets of the extraordinary internationalization plan with the aim of accompanying Italian companies in a market with very interesting growth potential. Suffice it to say that in the first five months of 2016, Chinese wine imports grew by 42%, reaching 1 billion euros.
“The Internet age has broken down the geographical barriers of commerce and business; From the very beginning, our mission has been to help businesses grow and compete more effectively by leveraging technology,” said Jack Ma, Alibaba Group Executive Chairman. “Through this MOU we hope to make Italian brands and products available to hundreds of millions of online shoppers across China, and at the same time help Italian brands and companies tap directly into the insatiable demand of Chinese consumers.”
In short, Italy has waged an all-out fight against Italian sounding, a widespread international industry of imitation and counterfeiting of Italian products which – it has been calculated – has a turnover of 60 billion euros a year, double the value of Italian products” veri” that we export all over the world, which subtracts 300.000 units of our workforce, and to whose imagination there is no limit. The phenomenon has tripled in the last 10 years.
In the US only one out of eight products, among those sold as Italian, it is truly Italian: there are Parma salami from Mexico, Parmesao from Brazil, Parmesan sold all over the world, Argentine Regianito, Parmesano widespread throughout South America, Chinese Parmeson. An “Italian parmesan perfect” is made in Australia.
There's also an Argentinian Gorgonzola, a Romanian Barbera and a German Pandoro. Then there are our most prestigious cured meats from Parma to San Daniele which are often "cloned" but also extra virgin olive oils and preserves such as the San Marzano tomato which is produced in California and sold throughout the United States. And it should not be underestimated that behind this flourishing industry there are not only dishonest foreign producers but also hidden investments of non-transparent money where the agromafias in the Italian agro-food sector extend their tentacles.
