The beers of 12 craft brewing realities from Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Emilia Romagna and Trentino Alto Adige land on the shelves of 39 DESPAR points of sale in the territory to which the brewery belongs. The initiative is the result of an agreement between Unionbirrai and Aspiag Service, concessionaire of the Despar brand for Triveneto and Emilia Romagna and was conceived to give craft microbreweries the opportunity to reach enthusiasts more easily and get in touch with a greater number of customers , also in light of the drop in consumption by the Horeca sector.
“This collaboration is a great opportunity for visibility for all the small artisans of beer – explains Simone Monetti, National Secretary of Unionbirrai – who will be able to make their beers and their peculiarities known and appreciated by an increasingly vast public. Together with Despar we have chosen to implement a cooperation at local level, in order to make the relationship between customers and the brewery more agile: after purchasing the beer, we hope that consumers will be so curious as to visit it in person to also taste the other beers not included in the selection for large-scale distribution”.
The phenomenon of craft breweries has experienced an unexpected development in recent years but the market is extremely fragmented. In total, according to Assobirra data, there are 855 companies in Italy between microbreweries and brewpubs.
"We find ourselves observing our young sector - says Vittorio Ferraris, President of Unionbirrai - able to establish itself not only on the internal market, but also to attract the attention of insiders from all over the world, thanks to the undisputed ability of our brewers to create beers of the highest quality, innovative and always capable of stimulating the curiosity of passionate consumers all over the planet. The road traveled has been long, but also tortuous. Doing business in our country can be extremely complex, doing it in the brewing field has meant dealing with inadequate regulations and a lack of attention from the institutions to the legitimate needs of this "new" production sector. Much remains to be done, but in the meantime we can certainly say that in the last few years some important goals have been achieved in support and protection of small independent craft beer producers: Italy is the only country in the world to have adopted a definition of "Craft Beer", an indispensable tool for communicating with consumers and with a strong product identity - notwithstanding the European legislation on food labelling, our country has reintroduced the obligation to indicate the location of the production plant on the label. We can therefore say that Italy is today among the most advanced countries, certainly in the brewing field, in terms of transparency and correctness of information for the benefit of consumers, who are able to know if the beer they are drinking is really Craft, produced from a Small Independent Producer, and where” .
