Quasi 900 B2B business meetings are taking place between yesterday and today, organized by Assocamerestero – the Association of Unioncamere and Italian Chambers of Commerce Abroad (CCIE), private, foreign and market entrepreneurial entities – and by Unioncamere Emilia-Romagna for local companies in the agro-food sector, with particular focus on the sector biological.
The event is part of the "True Italian Taste" project, coordinated by Assocamerestero with the support of 21 Italian Chambers of Commerce abroad of the countries involved in the incoming and financed by the Ministry of Economic Development in collaboration with ICE Agency as part of the " Strategic promotion campaign for the enhancement of the Italian product in relation to the Italian Sounding phenomenon”.
They join B2B meetings 30 between importers and foreign distributors coming respectively from Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Holland, Mexico, United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland, USA and operating in the retail, wholesale and e-commerce chains for medium and high-end products.
On the other hand, 113% of the 70 companies from Emilia-Romagna participating in the business meetings belong to the organic sector and are well distributed throughout the region.
“It is certainly significant – he says Alberto Zambianchi, President of Unioncamere Emilia-Romagna – that the project has found a convinced and numerous support from the Emilia-Romagna agro-food manufacturing companies, to the point that it was necessary to expand the number of business meeting sessions with the selected buyers, sessions which were then held with intense rhythms. The workshop thus presented an articulated and differentiated offer for productions and provincial origins, demonstrating the high level of our companies, particularly in the organic sector, which is the one to which great attention is currently being paid”.
Le productions presented were in fact very diversified: cured meats, cheeses, balsamic vinegar (from Modena and Reggio Emilia, some organic), EVO oil, baked goods, pasta, preserved products, coffee, chocolate, wine (also organic), tomato sauce , fruit & vegetables, other organic products too.
In the organic sector, Emilia-Romagna in 2017 recorded an increase in cultivated areas of over 20% compared to the previous year and it is the companies that produce and transform those that mark the greatest increase.
“With True Italian Taste the Italian Chambers of Commerce Abroad – he says Gaetano Fausto Esposito, Secretary General of Assocamerestero – have been working for almost two years to broaden the knowledge of authentically Italian agri-food products, to help foreign consumers distinguish them from the "Italian Sounding" ones which, through the use of words, colours, images and geographical references on labels and packaging , lead to mistakenly associate the local product with the authentic Italian one”.
The Italian Sounding phenomenon feeds a turnover of around 60 billion euros per year, including also the damage caused by agro-piracy.
Particular attention is paid to certified food products, which are increasingly sought after all over the world. Italy can count on 818 Geographical Indications registered at European level, almost 15 billion in production value, which translates into 8,4 billion in export value. These products are now worth 11% of the food industry and 28% of national agri-food exports (in 2015 it was 21%).
