In the last decade theexport of Italian wines è increased by 88%, mainly driven by the surge in exports of sparkling wines (+263%). He explains it Denis Pantini, director of the agriculture and food industry area of Nomisma in the article "National market vs Global market: how profitability and supply chain relationships change in the Italian wine sector" written together with Winemonitor financial analyst Paolo Bono.
In the study published by Nomisma a real profile of the companies in the wine sector more inclined to export. We start with a first important factor which is the one relating to turnover: if the average propensity to export in the wine sector approaches 50%, it exceeds 60% in the case of companies with a turnover of over 50 million. Therefore, it can be deduced that the internationalization of wineries is directly linked to company size. Another very important aspect is that relating to profitability of exporting companies: ROE – which reaches 4,4% among companies that export up to 50% of the value of their products – reaches 10,9% in the case of companies engaged in foreign trade for more than 75%.
These data seem to demonstrate that exports are going to take the form of a sort of way out of a trend that has been going on in Italy for several years and which we have already talked about in ainterview with Giovanni Mantovani of Veronafiere: in our country, in fact, the inexorable decline in wine consumption continues (dropped from 50 to 35 liters per capita). Therefore international trade, in recent years, has represented a new opportunity for many Italian producers.
But will the wine sector be able to do without the national market? For Pantini "the supply chain relationships that we have examined can certainly help the sustainability of the production fabric but sooner or later the Italian wine sector will have to deal with what appears to be an inevitable decline in internal consumption, increasingly linked to the large-scale distribution and therefore to a commercial interlocutor often "unattainable" by small producers".
