"Made in Rete" was born today in Rome, a trade association set up on the initiative of Confagricoltura to bring together agricultural, food, agro-food and agro-industrial companies that have already formed a network or intend to form one.
“Confagricoltura has been working on the network tool since 2012 – explained the president of the organization, Mario Guidi –, when he launched a specific project on this subject, just over two years after the birth of the network contract. An institute that until 2014 underwent continuous regulatory evolution, on which we too worked a lot and on which we are still working in terms of simplification and implementation of the specific features of the agricultural sector".
The success of this aggregation tool is demonstrated by the numbers: 3.056 contracts stipulated, 15.443 companies involved in all regions of Italy, with the greatest concentration in Lombardy (2.647), Emilia Romagna (1.509), Tuscany (1.544), Veneto (1.373), Lazio (1.342), Puglia (950). Among the sectors concerned, 38% is represented by services, 37% by industry/handicrafts, 11% by agriculture/fishing, 9% by commerce, 4% by tourism, 1% by other sectors.
In the agri-food sector, around 450 contracts have been stipulated to date, involving around 2.000 companies, of which 1.450 in the agricultural sector. Lombardy, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Tuscany are the regions with the highest number of businesses. Over 70 contracts followed directly by Confagricoltura.
“We are convinced – said Marco Caprai, the president of the newly born association – that in order to grow and increase its competitiveness, the agri-food sector must create networks, overcoming the boundaries between the various sectors, in order to create a more modern and innovative system. And the network contract is the ideal tool for doing this, because it allows you to build a critical mass, have more bargaining power, rationalize costs, optimize resources, shorten the supply chain, guarantee transparent work, share ideas and know-how: in short, achieve objectives that could hardly be achieved alone”.
